Nexus Three
by K.S. Reynard
Summary: Sequel to The Oasis. Two weeks after the Cerinian campaign, Krystal attempts to move on with her life, believing that the worst is behind her. But the past will be brought to account, and she, along with Star Fox and the rest of the Lylat System, will be forced to face her father's twisted legacy one last time. CANCELLED.
1. Nocturne

_**AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):**_

_After a ridiculously long planning phase that went through multiple variations, the sequel to The Oasis is finally here. I would have liked to write this is such a way that it wouldn't have been necessary to read The Oasis in order to understand what's going on in this story, but that didn't happen. So, let me try to summarize The Oasis for those of you who haven't read it..._

_Sorry, but I don't think that's possible. The Oasis was such a sprawling mess until about the halfway point that it's virtually impossible to sum it up in anything resembling a concise manner. So, if you want to understand some of the factions, locations, and plot elements, you'll need to have read The Oasis. That's not to say that you can't read this one if you haven't read the former story. Just be forewarned that there is going to be quite a bit that you're not going to fully understand._

_Also, the Iridium Chronicle is now gone. The reason for this (apart from the atrocious writing) is that this story is its spiritual successor and will reintroduce many of the elements and characters from the chronicle into The Oasis AU timeline. So, if you liked Iridium, you might be able to get into this one as well._

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_\- _§_ -_

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**① Nocturne ①**

_Two weeks after the Cerinia incident..._

The silent air in the bridge of the Ichtosian battlecruiser _Amethyst_ hinted at the blank emotions of the ship's crew as they began their return to their homeworld following the conflict on and above Cerinia. The vast expanse of space yawned ahead of the ship, with the streaks of stars creating a dreamy, if nauseating view through the front windows. With the lights in the bridge down apart from the multicolored control panels where a number of crew members monitored the _Amethyst_'s vital systems, relative darkness shrouded the area.

In the back corner of the bridge, Brigadier General Irena Volkchelovek sat alone in a red chair with her safety belt fastened around her waist. In contrast with her Cerinian campaign attire, the red and gray-furred coywolf wore a dull gray set of fatigues that appeared bland apart from the numerous medals and pins that covered her left breast pocket. The other crew members in the area occasionally shot her a passing glance, but ignored her for the most part. While she could command attention if she so desired, now was not one of those times. With the ship traveling through space at the maximum speed that its lightdrive engines were capable of providing, she sighed and took the time to reflect on the events of the previous two weeks.

In her mind, the campaign had been a failure of sorts. Although the Demiurge no longer lived to threaten the people of the known universe, over 750,000 of her own soldiers had been killed in the skirmish. Only making matters worse was the fact that she had found out about Felix Sparta's prior knowledge of the Demiurge's Seismic Rupture Device from one of Gaia's mercenaries. She had relayed the information to her Supreme Commander, but had not heard anything back from him regarding what he intended to do with it. On top of it all, the planet now existed in five floating chunks, with nearly all of its native peoples, wildlife, and vegetation wiped out by the cataclysm caused by the Seismic Rupture Device.

Part of her felt sickened that the decision had been made to dig up the salvageable pieces of the planet in hopes of extracting the valuable rare earth materials that supposedly made up a large portion of the planet's composition. In her mind, tearing the remnants of the planet apart after its destruction did not feel much different than beginning the mining operation with the planet and its people still intact. Despite the unfriendly natives, Irena viewed Cerinia as one of the most naturally beautiful places she had ever visited; and as a result, she felt somewhat devastated to see it reduced to its current state.

But she had other things to focus on at this point. With her job on Cerinia finished and her return to Ichtos guaranteed, she knew that a meeting with her Commander awaited her. A faint smile crossed her muzzle at the thought, which hinted at the special relationship that she shared with him. While most of his subordinates feared and respected him, she interacted with him on a personal level that most of his men could never hope to aspire to.

For a moment, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled. It would be good to be home after having spent two weeks around the hostile world of Cerinia. Opening her eyes again, she glanced towards the front of the bridge and raised an eyebrow when the ship suddenly lurched and began to decelerate. The panicked commotion of the pilots and officers at the front of the bridge alerted her to the reality of a legitimate emergency.

"_Then again, this ship has had lightdrive problems before."_

Refusing to take action for the moment, Irena focused her keen ears on the commotion in front of her. The stars in front of the ship began to slow down until the long streaks of light became dull blurs that dissipated as the ship exited superluminal. Over the din, she heard one of the pilots shout out, "Gravitational anomaly detected! Emergency deceleration activated!"

As the ship slowed to its subluminal cruising speed, Irena stared in shock at the sight that presented itself through the ship's front windows. The other crew members spotted it at the same time, with the bridge growing eerily silent as they locked eyes on the object that had thrown off their interstellar transit – a black planet illuminated only by six geometrically symmetrical blue streaks converging around a large central circle. No city lights broke up the darkness of the planet's surface, which appeared to be mostly covered with dense forests.

"This isn't supposed to be here," the ship's husky pilot deadpanned. "There's nothing on our star chart mentioning a planet between Cerinia and Ichtos. What the hell?"

"It doesn't matter what the chart says – if it exists, it exists. This changes nothing. We'll just have to clear the planetary gravitational field and then we'll be back on our way again," his co-pilot growled.

Shaking his head, the pilot replied, "You're right. I just don't like the look of…"

Without warning, the _Amethyst_ shook violently, throwing the pilot to the ground after he unfastened his seatbelt and stood up to get a better view of the strange planet.

"I don't believe it! It's a gravity well! It's pulling us in!"

Irena's eyes widened. Raising her voice, she barked, "What do you mean? How is that possible?"

"I don't know!" the pilot shouted, abandoning all forms of professionalism in his desperation. Turning back to the ship's controls, he ordered, "Activate the emergency auxiliary thrusters! We're not going to let this thing take us down!"

A thundering reverberation resounded through the ship as the auxiliary engines roared into life. The massive battlecruiser listed to the left as the thrust from the engines took effect, but as the pilot increased thrust to the right side emergency engines, the descent towards the planet's surface only seemed to increase. While the pilot sat with his jaw hanging open in terror, an earsplitting alarm blared in the ship's bridge, along with an automated voice emotionlessly declaring, "Warning – hull integrity compromised. Repair immediately."

A sickening crunch and a secondary vibration cut off the robotic voice, but the temporary silence meant only one thing – that the ship had been ripped into two pieces. As a confirmation of the crew's worst fears, the ship's front status readout blazed red and indicated that all power to the ship's engines had been lost, along with the rear half of the vessel. In addition, a secondary alarm chirped out a warning that the ship's oxygen supply was gradually and rapidly being sucked out the back of the ship's severed hull.

With nothing to prevent its descent, the doomed _Amethyst _rotated to face the planet as the gravity from the planet's surface continued to pull it down. As the dark world grew large in the ship's windows and the mesospheric flames began to flicker across the bridge exterior, Irena held her head in her hands; and despite having never believed in the supernatural, she silently prayed for her survival, knowing that her death was almost certain at this point. The shattered warship careened through the atmosphere with a ferocity that would have sent the crew flying across the bridge had they not been strapped into their seats.

In seconds, the ship broke through the ionosphere into the dark, rainy skies above the planet. The ground loomed larger with every split second, seemingly inviting the _Amethyst_'s crew to their graves.

"_This is it – this is the end,"_ Irena sobbed, hoping that no one would notice her as she held her head in her hands and dug her claws into her skin.

A moment later, all sound and movement ceased; and her world faded to black as the warship slammed into the planet's surface.

* * *

A throbbing pain shot through Irena's head as she slowly opened her eyes. Placing a hand on her head, she recoiled in horror when she felt the sensation of warm blood on her fingers. The view of her hand did nothing to improve her mood. In addition, her left arm felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. Multiple ribs on her left side screamed in pain, and she noticed that the gash in her forehead was not the only part of her body that had suffered a laceration of some sort. The torn fabric of her left pant leg suggested multiple gashes in her skin.

Deciding that she did not want to find out if she had sustained more injuries than she was already aware of, she looked around at the wreckage of the bridge in front of her.

It wasn't much of an improvement.

Twisted metal surrounded her, and exposed wires hung from the walls, sending out a shower of sparks every few seconds. From what she could tell, the only reason she had managed to survive was because the area where she had been sitting miraculously collapsed into a hollow cocoon of scrap metal, whereas the rest of the ship's frame had smashed everyone and everything in its path. Even the crew members who hadn't been crushed by the impact lay dead on the ground around Irena, thanks to the overwhelming g-forces of the collision with the ground. Seeing her fellow crew members dead around her, she wondered how she could have possibly survived. She briefly considered that her desperate prayer had been answered, but she quickly dismissed the notion as a trifling superstition.

Despite the temporary thrill of having survived what should have been a fatal accident, living through the crash gave her very little comfort. She knew that any fighters or transports in the _Amethyst_'s hangar would have been destroyed along with the mothership, meaning that whether she liked it or not, there would be no escape from the strange, dark planet. In some ways, she wished that she had been crushed during the ship's collision with the ground. At least that death would have been quick, if rather painful.

Her attention was diverted to the sound of falling rain dripping onto the floor nearby. Although almost no light filled the area, she could vaguely make out a small hole in the ceiling from where part of the bridge's frame had buckled. Seeing the gap gave her the hope of escaping the ship, although she had no idea if surviving outside was even possible. At the very least, the air seemed breathable, even though it felt heavy and painfully humid. Apart from the intense moisture in the air, Irena noticed the humidity level when she took a quick look at the fur on her right arm and frowned at the frizzy mess that it had become with almost no provocation from anything apart from the elements around her. The balmy temperature only added to the humid misery; and Irena's first order of business after standing up was to shed her jacket and strip down to the cutoff black tank top that she wore under her fatigues.

Moving towards the gap in the roof, she looked up and breathed a sigh of relief when she noted that it would be more than wide enough for her to escape through. On the other hand, the gap was five feet above her head. Silently cursing her half-coyote bloodline that caused her to only reach a height of five feet and one inch, she set to work pulling some of the scrap metal from the immediate area into the center of the floor in an attempt to use it as a makeshift ladder. After thirty minutes of dragging around sheet metal and suffering numerous cuts, she pulled herself out of the gap in the top of the bridge and stood on the top of the wrecked battlecruiser's fuselage.

The area around her resembled a tropical rain forest, with towering trees looming over her and a veritable monsoon soaking her from head to toe. In the skies above her, massive black clouds obscured any view of the starry sky. Almost no ambient light presented itself to Irena, forcing her eyes to adjust themselves to the near-complete darkness of the surrounding area. For a moment, a massive lightning strike crashed through the heavens and struck a tree several miles out, sending a forceful sound wave through the humid air. For the split second that the lightning bolt was visible, Irena thought she saw a colossal tower in the distance. Despite seeing no signs of civilization around her, she felt that she was not alone. She knew that it was not by accident that the _Amethyst_ had been pulled to the planet's surface; and as a reflex, she reached for her belt and placed her right hand on her handgun.

"_At least I've got something to defend myself with,"_ she muttered to herself.

Carefully working her way down the ship's wrecked hull, she jumped to the wet turf below and scanned the area for any signs of life. She knew that staying with the ship would likely be the best option in her situation, but she knew that at some point, any supplies she could retrieve would be depleted.

"_I'd better make sure that I'm not the only one who survived. Even if everyone else is dead, I still need to find a way into the armory and the pantry. I have a feeling I'm going to need the contents of both."_

The ship stretched for over a quarter mile in front of her – at least, what was left of the ship's front half. The aft section of the vessel was nowhere to be found. Even though Irena had the feeling it was nearby, she knew that both the armory and the pantry were located a third of the way down the hull.

Numerous fallen trees brought down by the ship made traversing the wreckage difficult, but after working her way to the intended area, she found a male alsatian crawling out of the wreckage. He looked just as wounded as Irena did, with bloody cuts and bruises that were likely only the beginning of his injuries. Wincing and standing up, he noticed Irena out of the corner of his eye and jumped. A sigh of relief escaped his lips as he recognized his commanding officer and hobbled towards her. He did a double take when he noticed her bare midriff, but he averted his eyes for fear of angering her.

Irena glanced at the tag on his military jacket, read the title "Captain Arzt," and immediately felt a twinge of relief knowing that she was not the only surviving officer. Given her situation, she likely would have treated him much differently if he had been a private. Feeling her spirits rising somewhat, she looked Arzt in the eyes and asked, "Is anyone else alive that you're aware of?"

The captain returned a grim scowl. "Private Mason and Lance Corporal Khudozhnik are the only two that I've seen. Everyone else is either dead or about to be dead. How did you survive? Your part of the ship hit the ground the hardest."

Irena shook her head. "I have no idea, Captain, but you should be glad that I'm still alive. We need to access the armory if possible. Can you get to it?"

Arzt nodded. "Yes. I already have Mason and Khudozhnik trying to salvage any weapons that are still functional."

"What about the pantry?"

"That's fubar."

Irena curled the corner of her mouth. "That's just great. Well, I thought I saw a few fruit trees around here anyway. Maybe it won't be a problem."

"Food is the least of our concerns right now. We have to get off this planet somehow," Arzt replied.

Irena placed a hand on her hip. "On that note, did you try to contact Command, by any chance?"

"Yes, ma'am. No response. There's some kind of interference blocking the signal."

Not wanting to further demoralize the captain, Irena weakly nodded and took a deep breath. "We'll think of something. First things first, though – we need to arm up and scout the area. I saw a building the last time lightning struck, so this planet is definitely colonized. We need to know who we're dealing with here. If they deliberately pulled us out of orbit, they're going to be coming for us any minute now."

"Assuming that we we're what they're after. Some of these people are wreckers – people who intentionally wreck ships and salvage the parts. If they wanted us alive, they would have kept the ship intact."

Irena glared at Arzt. "Like I said, they're going to be coming for us. Hurry up and show me the armory."

"Yes, ma'am."

Ducking under part of the ship's hull, Captain Arzt led Irena into the shattered crew quarters where he had emerged from. From what Irena could tell, Arzt's area of the ship had suffered the least amount of damage. Even the hallway through the crew quarters remained relatively intact. The ceiling dipped slightly and significant damage covered the walls, but the main corridor was still clean enough for Arzt and Irena to reach the armory, where a white husky and a tall barn owl stood sorting through the weapons and ammunition that had survived the crash.

Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, both soldiers looked toward the armory door and acknowledged the two officers as they entered the area. Without speaking a word, Irena looked at the husky and the owl and noted the ranks and features of both. She avoided visibly showing frustration at the husky whose uniform hinted at his Private rank, knowing that it would do nothing to help them. When Arzt remained silent, she approached the pile of weapons that Mason and Khudozhnik had organized on the floor inside the armory door.

"Arm yourselves for close range engagements with little to no line of sight. Long-range weapons aren't going to do us any good in this environment. Make it quick, too. We might be about to be overrun."

The suggestion of being attacked caused both troopers to set to work arming themselves as quickly as possible. While Mason and Khudozhnik each picked up a compact bullpup rifle and clipped several spare mags to their belts, Irena selected a slightly heavier rifle which she recognized as an export from her home region of Rodina. Captain Arzt picked up the last remaining bullpup rifle and turned toward the exit while Irena slipped four spare magazines onto her belt and stepped back into the hallway.

Glancing over her shoulder, the coywolf warned her three subordinates, "Don't fire unless fired on first. Avoid unnecessary conflict at all costs, and if you can help it, stay out of sight of anyone you see. We'll take it one step at a time."

Irena led the company through the ship's central corridor and into the crew area where the external wall had been ripped apart. The already-familiar feeling of the driving rain and stifling humidity returned in spades as she and the three behind her stepped into the elements outside the wrecked battlecruiser. Glancing at the compass on her right wrist, she stared in the direction of the tower she had spotted earlier and said, "We'll head northwest from here."

The jungle canopy surrounding the small company of soldiers constricted their movements, which concerned them in the event that they were to be ambushed. The sound of the wind, rain, and lightning masked all other noises in the forest, effectively deafening them to any threatening audio waves.

As her eyes finished adjusting themselves to the darkness, Irena noted a marked similarity between her current surroundings and the jungle in Cerinia's equatorial region. The resemblance struck her as being more than a coincidence, although she had nothing to base her supposition on. The only difference she noticed was the lack of oversized vegetation endemic to Cerinia. As she swung her body over a fallen tree and continued her trek into the forest, the husky private at the tail end of the group gasped and blurted out, "Did you see that?

Irena sneered. The last thing she wanted to deal with in this situation was an inexperienced soldier. Looking over her shoulder, she tried to keep a straight face and asked him, "What were we supposed to see?"

"Eyes…glowing blue eyes. There's someone out there. They're watching us," Private Mason whispered.

Captain Arzt's ears perked up, and he gave Irena a concerned glance. "Orders, General?"

"Keep moving. If you see it again and it makes any wrong moves, shoot it full of holes."

"Copy that," Arzt replied before looking back at Mason and Khudozhnik and warning them, "Don't let your guard down."

The party of four continued their slow, arduous march through the thick, dark jungle, with Irena maintaining a close lead that she seemed unhappy with. Knowing more about her than the private and the corporal behind him, Arzt understood that she would have made far more progress without him and his two men. He knew that Irena despised slow operations; and the slog through the rainforest fit that description perfectly.

Suddenly, Irena stopped cold in the center of the path. Fearing the apparition that Mason had warned them about, Arzt crept up behind her and whispered into her ear. "What is it?"

"There's a building up ahead," Irena whispered in return.

Arzt adjusted his eyes and saw the aforementioned structure farther up the path. From a distance, it looked to be constructed out of a reflective alloy and painted dark gray or black – it was difficult to tell the difference in the darkness of night. Along the edges of the building near the flat roof, deep blue lines pulsated with a cadence that seemed almost lifelike. After looking more closely, Arzt realized that the entire building had the same pulse as the blue trim lights. The side of the structure faded in and out of a dark silver color, switching to black every two seconds.

"Now that's unusual," Irena muttered.

"Do you think it's worth the risk to check it out?" asked Arzt.

Irena faintly nodded. "We're all going to die here eventually unless something changes. The more we know about this place, the better our odds of surviving are."

Arzt turned to update Khudozhnik and Mason on the situation, but when he glanced over his shoulder, only the former of the two was behind him.

"Oh shit – Mason's gone," the alsatian deadpanned.

Irena's eyes widened. "You don't think…"

"I _do_ think," Arzt nervously replied.

"Then we need to get inside that building ASAP. If something's out to get us, they won't have the same element of surprise that they would if we were outside."

"I don't like it, but I see your logic," Arzt replied, motioning for Lance Corporal Khudozhnik to follow him and Irena towards the building.

The trail sloped upwards, growing steadily steeper as the trio neared the building. At a closer distance, the pulsating building panels became more noticeable. Standing thirty feet from the structure, Irena noted that the sides seemed to have honeycomb-patterned seams etched into the metal. A short set of stairs led to the door, which didn't appear to have any notable security measures. Ever vigilant for any threats, Irena scanned the building for security cameras and saw none.

Tentatively waving her two counterparts on, she climbed the steps and stood in front of the door. Artz and Khudozhnik moved in behind her, with the latter walking backwards and pointing his rifle at the path behind him while keeping his back pressed against the Captain's armored vest.

Irena eyed the black door latch and grasped it. She pressed down on the open button, and as she expected, the door refused to open.

"Captain," she whispered, "Can you give me a hand here?"

Arzt gave her a wary eye. "Are you sure you want to breach the door? What if an alarm sounds?"

"It's definitely possible – likely, even. However, I don't think it would make things much worse for us than they already are. This doesn't look like a centralized building, so if someone is monitoring it, it would take a little while for them to take action. By that time, we'd be hiding in the forest. Besides, if we don't get in here, that _thing_ is going to keep coming after us."

"You do realize that we'll have to deal with it whether we get into this building or not, right?"

Irena frowned. "Yes, I'm aware of that, Captain. We're going to test its patience and wait it out."

"I don't like that. It could call for reinforcements and trap us inside if we give it the chance," Arzt objected.

Irena bared her canines and replied, "I don't think calling for reinforcements is even on its mind. It's toying with us. If it's been following us for the last few miles, that gives it more than enough time to call for help. It hasn't done that. I don't think it's going to, either. To defeat these kinds of enemies, you have to play their game and then beat them at it. Now, can you force this door?"

"Yes, ma'am," Arzt grumbled.

The canine moved towards the door while Irena stepped out of his way. Turning his body to the side, he slammed his right shoulder into the door with all the force he could muster. The door flew open and slammed into the wall on the side that it was hinged to, but no additional sounds came from the action. No alarms blared, no automated defense systems presented themselves, and in the silence, Irena felt that something was not right.

Holding up her assault rifle, she stepped into the building with Arzt and Khudozhnik in tow. The light level inside the small structure was every bit as abysmal as it was outside, but Irena could vaguely make out the forms of desks that occupied both the right and left walls. Multiple clear, glass-like monitors sat atop the desks, along with equally clear keyboards and mouse track pads that shared the same minimalistic theme. In the center of the rectangular space, a large stack resembling a box of servers stood by. No sound emanated from it, suggesting that the last users of the facility had shut it down for reasons that could only be guessed at this point.

Hoping to light up the room, Irena reached for a nearby button on the wall and pressed it. Nothing happened. Frustrated that the lights refused to cooperate, she glanced over her shoulder and said, "Khudozhnik, shut the door. Make sure nothing else gets in."

The corporal replied, "Yes ma'am," and placed his hand on the door handle. While the owl eased the door shut, Irena and Arzt stepped in front of the long, wall-mounted desk on the right side of the room. Swiping her finger across its plasticky surface, Irena brought her index finger to her face and noticed the alarming amount of dust on it. A second glance at the area revealed numerous spiderwebs and piles of dust that caused her allergies to flare up within seconds.

Feeling an agonizing itching sensation in her nasal cavities, Irena let out a loud sneeze as the door clicked shut. After recovering and sniffling in response to the rekindled feeling of dust in her nose, she turned around to address the corporal.

"_No…you can't be serious."_

On the floor just inside the door frame, numerous boot prints stood out amidst the dust that coated the metallic surface. Only a matter of feet inside the door, several other marks attracted Irena's attention. With wide eyes, she stared at the streaks of clean flooring indicative of someone or something being dragged out of the building by force. In the dusty chaos on the floor, she noticed a different set of footprints – footprints created by what looked like bare feet. Their diminutive size brought to mind Irena's own feet and could not have been made by a man.

Abandoning all restraint, Irena ripped the door open and looked in both directions for any sign of Corporal Khudozhnik. However, just like Mason, he was nowhere to be found. She whirled around, half expecting Arzt to be gone as well, but the large shepherd dog still stood behind her.

With her ears standing on end, she barked, "Captain, we have to make sure we don't get separated. If one of us has our back turned, that thing will use it as an opportunity to attack."

Arzt gave his commanding officer a worried expression. "You don't think it's in this building, do you?"

Irena studied the room around her for a moment and then replied, "I can't know for sure, but I don't think so. We would have heard the door…"

"…Did you see that?" Arst blurted out, taking a terrified step backwards and looking like he had seen a ghost.

"Where?" Irena demanded.

Arzt pointed towards the back left corner of the room, close to the exit door on the opposite side of the building. "Over there. I don't know how it could have possibly gotten in."

"What did it look like?"

"I only saw it for a second. All I saw were two glowing blue eyes and blue conduit patterns below them," Arzt explained, trying to prevent his hands from shaking.

Irena scowled. "Well, next time you see it, shoot, damn it!"

"It was gone before I could do anything. I swear, if I get a good shot at it, I'm taking that monster down."

Although she hid it well, fear began to creep up on Irena. The realization that the building offered her no protection from the apparition that had already taken two of her men caused her to feel a form of terror that she had not experienced since an incident in her teenage years that left her with acute hydrophobia which she had never managed to overcome. She began to eye the exit door fifty feet from her position, but as she stepped towards it, she glanced to the right and noticed the opened front panel of the data bank in the center of the room. Near the top of the electronic unit was a large, round button which she assumed would power up the console.

Figuring that it would be unlikely to start, she pressed the button. To her shock, a quick orange glow shot through the console before the wave of orange wove its way through the numerous boxes and units inside the console. Turning around, she stared in shock as the clear monitors and keyboards on the desks came to life, bathing the area in a warm, orange glow. The systems booted up far more rapidly than would have been expected of technology that had been left unattended for long periods of time. After the loading process, numerous images appeared on the orange-trimmed screens.

"Captain? Are you seeing this?"

"Yes," Arzt replied, walking to her side and staring at one of the computer monitors, which showed the anatomical layout of what looked like an anthropomorphic feline. He looked at the screens to the right and left of the one in front of him and noted similar depictions on them.

Turning towards Irena, he asked, "What's the meaning of this?"

Irena shook her head. "I wish I knew. I thought this place was strange before, but this takes it to another level."

"These screens seem to show the anatomy of almost every major form of anthropomorph that we're aware of. Why, though?"

"You are asking the wrong person," Irena deadpanned, turning around and looking at the monitors on the opposite side of the room. Like the monitors on the left side of the room, the ones on the right wall glowed orange – all except the one at the end of the right desk, near the exit door.

"A blue screen?" Arzt whispered.

"I'll bet there's a one in three chance that it has something to do with those blasted Cerinians," Irena muttered, walking towards the blue screen. "What do you know? I was right."

Arzt followed his commanding officer to the back end of the room and shook his head. "Of course they'd get their own special screen. Let's hope this doesn't have anything to do with the Demiurge thinking that the Cerinians were the galaxy's master race."

"'Were' is the operative word," Irena replied. "You'd think that someone as interested in Cerinian domination of the known universe would be a little more hesitant to blow up the planet with ninety percent of the entire galaxy's Cerinians on it." The coywolf looked over the screen for several seconds, then shook her head and growled, "It would be nice if the text here wasn't in hieroglyphics. It would probably explain everything about this place."

Arzt grumbled in response; and as Irena continued to stare at the screen, she felt the dust irritating her nose again. Looking away from the screen, she brought her hand to her muzzle and sneezed into it. While her senses recovered, she opened her eyes and heard a quick yelp behind her, followed by the sound of the nearby exit door clicking shut.

The realization of what had just happened dawned on her and spawned a wave of fear and anger that threatened to overwhelm her mind's logical control center. Baring her teeth, she reached for the door handle and heaved it open. Below the short set of metal steps that led to the ground level, trees and shrubs encroached on the building from every angle, preventing her from seeing anything other than the dense vegetation and the thick curtains of rain as they fell from the heavens.

She struggled to the point of denial with believing that the large, muscular captain had been dragged out of the building by a silent aggressor with her same shoe size, but after a frantic minute spent staring at her surroundings, she forced herself to admit to being alone. Without anyone around her, she felt vulnerable in a way that felt foreign to her, even as an officer with several crucial operations under her belt. The rainy, dark surroundings played against her; and although she hoped that the sun would rise soon, she wondered if the planet was locked in perpetual darkness. She had never seen or heard of such a planet, but the oppressive nature of her surroundings forced her to consider the possibility that she was on one.

Biting her nails, she thought, _"I don't know where to go now. I'm one on one with that _thing_, and it has every advantage over me. I could keep moving forwards, but there might be more of them farther ahead. If I stay here, I'm dead. If I go back to the ship, I might be able to hold out a little while longer. It's the only place where I might have an advantage. But wait – whoever runs this place brought the ship down on purpose and definitely didn't want anyone to survive the crash. If they're going to try to salvage the ship like Captain Arzt suggested, heading back there would be just as bad as moving towards their civilization."_

She paused for thought for a moment and wondered, _"Maybe if I leave the area, that stalker will stop following me and leave me alone. Arzt mentioned that something was jamming our comms signal. If I travel far enough, I might be able to break free of the jamming system and contact home. It's a long shot, but I think anything's worth a try at this point."_

As the rain poured down around her, she glanced at her wrist compass and looked to the west. The trees that towered over her allowed her to see nothing more distant than five hundred feet, but she knew that the tower she had seen earlier stood to the north. From her brief view of the planet from orbit, the world seemed mostly uninhabited except for the strange central point, which the ship had been pulled into. She wondered if heading west would be a mistake, but she also understood that staying in the building would only give her shadow more time to plot its next attack.

Reluctantly, she descended the short set of stairs at her feet and set foot on the soggy forest floor. The rain saturated her fur once again as she made her way through the underbrush, turning around and looking down her rifle's sights every few seconds. To her left, the sound of bushes rustling reached her ears above the roar of the weather.

Thirty feet ahead of her, she saw a circular clearing covered in lush grass. The sound of something brushing against the leaves around her continued to bombard her ears; and this time, the sound came from the right as well as the left. Recognizing the danger of her situation, she sprinted into the clearing and spun around in time to see two quadrupedal creatures emerge from the underbrush. Their appearance brought to mind her own lupine blood, but apart from the vaguely similar shape of their muzzles, no other similarities stood out. The black creatures sported lush fur coats that covered the majority of their bodies, while traces of white stood out on the tips of their muzzles and lower legs.

As she stared at the feral wolves, she noticed two more of them crawling out of the forest to her right and left. Looking over her shoulder, she heard the faint sound of twigs crackling and saw the faint glint of four additional yellow eyes in the darkness. With six wolves surrounding her, her heart rate spiked when the two ahead of her bared their teeth and snarled. At that moment, she glanced at the forest path that led into the clearing and locked eyes with the blue-eyed monster that had claimed the lives of her three counterparts. At least, she assumed that it had claimed their lives.

The ghostly figure was shod in black, with its only visible aspects being the blue, conduit-like lines that ran up and down its feminine body and its haunting blue eyes that struck fear into her the longer she looked into them. A thick tail whisked back and forth behind its back with an angry cadence that unnerved Irena all the more.

It only took a matter of seconds for her to realize that the shadow had no intention of showing mercy to her. The six wolves continued to approach her with a slow, measured gait, as if they failed to notice Irena's assault rifle pointed at them with its owner's finger hovering over the trigger.

Irena knew what would happen next if she did nothing. She knew that she would have to open fire before the wolves could come any closer, but seeing the blue-eyed ghost standing thirty yards away from her gave her other ideas.

The wolves moved to within twenty feet. The shadow on the path ahead of Irena remained in place. The coywolf kept her aim trained on the first creature to her left, but she knew that she stood no chance of killing all of the wolves before they ripped her to pieces.

One final course of action presented itself to her. Baring her teeth, she took aim at the glowing pair of eyes and fired. The sound of plasma erupting from the barrel of her gun shattered the humid jungle air as the six wolves broke into a sprint and lunged at her.

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):  
_

_I know that opening the story with an all-OC chapter probably isn't the most popular thing to do, but just bear with it. The standard character cast will return in the next chapter and stay at the story's forefront from then on. Also, if you read Iridium, you definitely recognized the character stalking Irena and her unit. Yes, she's back.  
_

_Also, this story is going to get some proper cover art...eventually._


	2. Return To Dystopia

**② Return To Dystopia ②**

The morning broke over Corneria City, flooding the city with warm, indulgent sunlight that woke the metropolis from its night's sleep. In the kitchen of Star Fox's rented house, all four active members – including the recently-reinstated Falco Lombardi – sat at the wooden table next to a large window that gave the team a view of the city's distant skyscrapers from the rustic comfort of the small seaside area where they spent their downtime. While Slippy pulled his smartphone out of his pocket and checked the weather forecast, Peppy approached the table with a plate of waffles. Placing the large porcelain platter on the table, he took a seat between Fox and Slippy, with Falco occupying the chair next to Fox.

Shifting in his seat and letting out a sigh, Peppy looked at Fox and murmured, "It's great to finally have some time off. It's too bad that trip back to the Oasis didn't pan out."

Fox shook his head. "It's ridiculous. Pepper got me a room with only one day's notice; and when I call them, they tell me there's a two week waiting list."

"Pepper's good with things like that," said Slippy. "He probably put a bit of pressure on them to make it happen. Still, I'm mad that he only booked a room for you. It was freezing on the _Great Fox._"

"Well, we've got all the money we could possibly need now, so you won't have to worry about that anymore," Fox replied. "Speaking of the _Great Fox_, how's the work on the new model going?"

Slippy snatched up two waffles and answered, "It's slow work, but it'll be ready in about a week. It's harder to convert the military design to our specifications than you'd think. You've seen the design blueprints, right?"

Fox nodded. "It looks great, at least on paper."

With the conversation about the ship going no further, Falco nudged Fox and smirked. "So, how are things going with your girlfriend?"

Fox nearly dropped his waffle on the tablecloth between the waffle plate and his own. Blushing, he replied, "Krystal's not my girlfriend. I thought I made that clear."

Peppy chortled. "Fox, you don't have to be so defensive. We're all happy that you finally found someone."

"No, no, no…it's not like that," Fox emphasized, staring at his waffle instead of Peppy's face. "I'm just trying to help her get settled in here. You saw what happened to Cerinia."

"Yes, but going out of your way to buy an apartment for her when she could have just stayed here seems like a bit much," said Peppy. "Slip and I saw how you felt for each other when you landed in the hangar after Cerinia broke up. Don't try to deny it, Fox."

Fox shook his head and frowned. "There's more to it than that, but I don't want to talk about it. You'd understand if I told you."

"I take it that she's got some secrets," Peppy replied. "Don't worry – if we don't need to know about them, we won't ask."

"Thanks, Peppy. If I'm honest, I don't think she'd want me to talk about them, either."

Peppy took a bite out of his waffle, and after a brief pause, he explained, "I should let you all know that General Pepper called me an hour ago. He wants us to see him."

Fox cocked his head. "What's it about this time? It's not another nuclear inspection, is it?"

"Thankfully not," Peppy answered, laughing. "My word – that was a ridiculous assignment."

"Nuclear inspection?" Falco quizzically asked.

Fox shook his head. "It's a long story. Somehow it tied into me finding out about a crucial detail that saved the universe as we know it."

Falco's eyes widened. "Well, damn. I'm disappointed that I missed out on that."

"You should be. Anyway, what did Pepper say he wanted from us?" Fox asked, looking back towards Peppy.

A concerned, stony countenance came across the hare's face as he replied, "After the Demiurge was killed, Cornerian authorities confiscated his battleship when it reached Regency. They've been working on reverse engineering some of the systems onboard the ship, and they've been talking with researchers from Asgard Industries about them as well. Here's why Pepper wants our help: two days ago, several of the Cornerian military's top engineers were sent to Asgard to meet with the company's top brass. They haven't been heard from since." Slippy gave him a worried glance, but Peppy met his eyes and explained, "Don't worry, Slippy. Your father wasn't one of them."

Fox bared his teeth and clenched his fists. "Those bastards. Why did I get the feeling something like that would happen?"

Peppy waved his hand, dismissing Fox's idea. "It's not what you think. You see, Asgard has gone dark as well."

Glaring at Peppy, Fox muttered, "Let me guess – Pepper wants us to look into it."

"That's what it sounded like to me," Peppy replied. "Our meeting is an hour from now."

Fox sighed and placed his fork on his half-eaten waffle. "You know, we don't have to do this. With all the money Felix forwarded into my account, we could live here for the rest of our lives and never take another job."

"Yes, we could," Peppy replied. "But I know you too well. You're not in it for the money. Without Star Fox, your life doesn't have a purpose. Of course, if you really want to sit this one out, you can do that. But I don't think you want to."

Fox shook his head. "You're right. I want to do it."

"I figured. It'll take almost forty-five minutes for us to get to the military base, so we'll need to leave soon if we want to make it there on time."

Frowning, Fox asked, "Why can't he just talk to us over the holoprojector? It would save so much time."

Before Peppy could respond, Falco answered, "Because Pepper's an old fart and probably just wants to see us in person. Besides, our hangar is a mile from the military base. We'd have to go there anyway."

Fox curled the corner of his mouth and muttered, "That answers that. Let's get going, then."

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

The long taxi ride into Corneria City brought Star Fox to the gates of the Corneria City military complex – one of the largest and most advanced in the Lylat System. After presenting their ID cards to the canine security guard stationed at the base's perimeter, the four pilots walked across the concrete towards the largest building in the area. The gray, ten-story building contained the majority of the base's offices, meeting rooms, and technologically-based areas. The structure itself was relatively new compared to the rest of the base as a result of the original building having been obliterated during Andross' initial attack on Corneria City.

Approaching the building's double glass doors, Fox grabbed the right of the two door handles and entered the building. Just inside, near an area resembling a receptionist's desk, stood a short female raccoon in a blue Cornerian Army dress uniform. Upon seeing Fox and his team, she waved to them and said, "Good morning. I'm General Pepper's assistant Alice Brinks. Follow me. I'll escort you to his office. You're right on time, by the way. He'll really appreciate that."

"I'm sure," Fox mumbled in response, still frustrated by the formality of Pepper requiring him to meet with him in his office.

Alice led the team through the twisting halls and corridors inside the administrative building until they reached an elevator, which she motioned towards and stepped into. With the team inside the stark gray box, Alice pressed the button marked '6', and the elevator shot up at a speed that Fox and company were not accustomed to. The elevator doors slid open to reveal floor six as Alice stepped out ahead of Star Fox and led them to the right. Near the end of the gray hallway, General Pepper's nondescript door awaited them. Apart from the plaque on its surface which bore the old hound dog's name, one would have mistaken it for any of the other doors in the area.

Approaching the door and knocking on it, Alice turned the latch and entered Pepper's quarters before announcing, "Star Fox is here."

"Excellent!" the general replied. "Star Fox, please do come in."

Without a word, Fox ushered his team into Pepper's office, which featured a thick sheet of bulletproof glass that acted as the back wall and the room's main window at the same time. Pepper himself sat at an ancient wooden desk in front of the glass wall. A state of the art computer monitor sat atop the desk off to the left side. The interior of the room was comprised of wood trim, with a luxuriant maroon-colored patterned rug that occupied most of the space on the floor. Four leather-trimmed chairs stood in front of Pepper's desk, and as Fox and his team approached him, he motioned for them to sit down.

As the four mercenaries took their seats in front of the desk, Pepper waved Alice out of the room. The door clicked shut behind her as she exited the general's office, leaving Star Fox alone with Corneria's highest ranking general.

Clasping his hands, Pepper leaned forward in his chair and said, "Thank you for being willing to meet with me in person. I know there were more expedient methods available, but I felt it would be in our best interest to meet face to face. Besides, your hangar is less than ten minutes from here. You'd have to come here anyway."

Fox curled his lip and replied, "It's not a problem, sir. Now, what did you want to talk to us about?"

Pepper glared at Peppy. "You did explain what I told you earlier, correct?"

Peppy nodded, and Pepper continued, "Excellent. I'll fill you in on the finer details, then. This madness started when we sent a group of our top researchers to Asgard Industries to investigate a weapon that was integrated into the Demiurge's flagship _Æ__sir._ Reverse engineering of the original cannon suggests that it is an antimatter weapon of some sort. We have no knowledge of how it was weaponized, which is why we sent our researchers to Skallis to look into it. As you may have guessed, this has to do with the possibility of an enemy having access to a weapon that was confirmed to have taken down a fully armed battlecruiser with a single shot. Knowing that Asgard Industries has no qualms with selling their technology to anyone who writes them a large enough check, it is in our best interest to make sure that no one else gets their hands on a weapon like this."

"But then Asgard just went dark?" asked Fox.

Pepper's face took on a stern countenance. "Yes. What's more, we have confirmed that this was not part of Asgard's plan. They gave us no resistance when we requested that we investigate the antimatter weapon, so for the entire complex to effectively shut down suggests that something else is at play."

Fox's eyes narrowed. "So, what do you want us to do about it?"

"I want you to enter the facility and let me know what you find," Pepper replied. "If possible, I want those researchers brought back if they're still alive. Heaven knows what may have happened to them at this point."

"We'll do what we can," Fox replied. "I'm assuming that you want us on-site ASAP."

"Yes, indeed. I'm authorizing the usage of the Beltino Orbital Gate as we speak. The gate will allow you to reach the planet less than thirty minutes after you leave the surface of Corneria. Once you reach Skallis, don't waste any time. By the time you arrive, I will have arranged for a landing pad at the Skallis Sector 7 air and spaceport. I do have one question for you, however."

"What's that?" asked Fox.

"How long will it be before you can have your battleship in orbit?"

Fox glanced at Peppy, who stroked his chin and told Pepper, "About an hour, sir."

The general sighed. "I suppose it will have to do. If there is anything you can do to speed up the process, please do it by all means."

"Yes sir," Peppy replied.

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

"_This probably isn't the best idea, but I think it's the right thing to do."_

Fox fidgeted in the back seat of the old yellow taxi as it wove through the crowded streets of downtown Corneria City close to the rented hangar where the team kept the _Great Fox_. Peppy and Slippy remained in the hangar area, working on readying the dreadnaught for flight and obtaining the necessary airspace clearance permission needed to leave the ground where it was docked. Falco had decided to meander off to a nearby tavern with the intention of buying a quick drink before leaving Corneria, which left Fox to himself for a short amount of time. Although he had a suspicion that the rest of his team knew what he intended to do, he kept silent about hiring a cab to take him to Krystal's apartment.

"_It's been almost a week since the last time I saw her, so I need to do this," _he reasoned, despite knowing that it would have been more in his interest to help Slippy and Peppy prepare the _Great Fox _for liftoff. As the taxi pulled to the curb in front of the red-painted high-rise building where his Cerinian friend kept her apartment, he swiped his credit card into the card reader ahead of him and thanked his driver. Then, he opened his door and stepped out. The tall building loomed in front of him, its numerous reflective windows providing it with a modern, clear-cut aesthetic that brought to mind its recent construction date. The apartment complex stood in a high-demand area and commanded a high rent, but Fox felt no regret with providing Krystal with a room on the building's eighth floor.

Knowing that he did not have much time to visit, he jogged towards a side entrance door on the left side of the building and pulled out a plastic card that acted as a key for Krystal's room and any access doors in the complex. The red door unlocked itself when Fox presented the key, allowing him to open it and enter the building's first level. After locating an elevator and riding it to the eighth floor, he stepped into a red and beige hallway complete with oval-shaped accent lights and crosshatch-patterned dark red carpeting that showed no signs of stains.

Fox took a deep breath as he approached Krystal's door – marked '804'– and tapped on it. A faint sensation trickled across his mind before the sound of bare feet reached his ears from inside the door. A moment later, the door opened to reveal the blue vixen from Fox's previous adventure. Above the waist, she wore a plain white, long sleeved henley shirt with none of the buttons fastened. The garment gave her a mildly tempting appearance and complemented the form-fitting black jeans that accompanied it. A tribal necklace made of thin, ropy fabrics hung from her neck, and brass-colored bands encircled her wrists.

Krystal's eyes lit up at the sight of Fox, but at the same time, an air of fear and worry wandered across her face. "Hi, Fox," she said, trying to appear overjoyed to see him.

"Hey Krystal," Fox replied. "I'm going to be leaving Corneria for a little while, so I thought I'd visit you before I left. Is something wrong? You look kind of worried."

Krystal cringed and waved him into her apartment before closing the door behind her and pulling out a chair at the small, inexpensive white table near her apartment's kitchen. "I could say that nothing's bothering me, but I don't want to lie anymore," she sighed, sitting with her back to her blue and white-colored bed and the balcony that overlooked the city street below. "Please, sit down."

Fox obeyed and seated himself across from Krystal. "So, what's wrong? Do you not like it here?"

The vixen's eyes fell to the table surface. "No. I really don't. Corneria City has so much more to offer than Tivuri ever did, but I just don't feel at home here. Then there are the people. I feel like everybody's watching me no matter where I am, and it seems like every man anywhere near my age tries to mentally undress me when they see me. It's disgusting, and I can't stand it."

"Then maybe you should fasten some of those buttons. I'm not the most observant person, but even I can tell that you're not wearing underwear," Fox replied, pointing at Krystal's shirt.

Krystal took one quick glance downward and huffed, "Why do these things matter so much around here? On Cerinia, no one took a second glance even if you walked around naked in some places."

Taking a quick breath and trying his best to suppress the sultry image of Krystal that appeared in his mind, Fox replied, "This isn't Cerinia. Our culture is different. You'll just have to get used to it. Either that, or you can try to find some other place to live. You could probably do whatever you want on Sauria, but I doubt you'd want to live there."

The blue vixen frowned, shook her head, and then murmured, "That's not why I'm bothered, though."

"What's the real problem, then?"

Krystal looked into Fox's green eyes and answered, "It's you. You're the only person who knows what I've done, and every time I see you, I can feel you judging me for what happened to Cerinia. You can try to hide it, but I know you think I'm a monster. You would never admit that, though."

"Krystal, it's not like I can forget about things like that," Fox protested.

Clenching her fists, Krystal begged, "Can't you at least try to treat me the way you did before my father showed up?"

Fox scratched the underside of his muzzle and looked off to the side towards the refrigerator in the kitchen. Fearful of offending his blue friend, he pondered his answer for nearly ten seconds before he forced himself to look at Krystal and replied, "You were a different person back then. Things changed after your father kidnapped you."

Krystal's ears fell, and her head drooped. "Damn him to blazes. This is all his fault. If he had never showed up, Cerinia would still be in one piece, and I wouldn't have all these blasted regrets in my mind."

Fox swallowed, then nervously replied, "You didn't have to follow him. You could have run away if you wanted to. I know what he did to you, but it was still your decision to listen to him."

For an instant, Krystal's eyes blazed in anger, and she bared her teeth at Fox before relenting and letting out a quiet sob. "How many times do I have to tell you that I'm sorry before you'll forgive me?"

"I did forgive you."

"That's what you said, but you still haven't forgiven me in your heart," Krystal replied.

Biting his lip, Fox stated, "If what you want is for me to put Cerinia out of my mind completely, that's not going to happen quickly – if ever. Things like that take years to get over. But please, understand that I'm not judging you because of what you did on Cerinia. I know you've let go of that part of yourself, and I know that you won't do something like that again."

"You're lying. You don't trust me," Krystal deadpanned.

Realizing that he had made a mistake in trying to lie to a telepath, he averted his eyes and muttered, "I'm sorry. You turned so quickly that I'm worried you'd do it again if someone like your father showed up in the future."

"I've learned my lesson, Fox. It won't happen again, and that is a promise," Krystal emphasized, gritting her teeth.

"I hope so," Fox whispered before standing up and pushing in his chair. "If there's anything I can do to help you, let me know. You probably don't believe me, but I want to forget about what happened on Cerinia too. I'd like to stay here longer, but I have to get going. I'm on the clock, and General Pepper isn't going to be kept waiting."

Krystal nodded and stared at him before collecting herself and asking, "How hard is it to fly one of your fighters?"

Recognizing the direction Krystal intended to go with her question, Fox replied, "It's easier than most other fighters, but that's not saying very much. It took me years of training before I was even remotely prepared to fly missions, and even pilots who put in years of effort end up being rejected."

Krystal's eyes fell to the white tabletop in front of her, and with a broken voice, she sighed, "It was worth a try. Take care of yourself, Fox. Even if you don't feel the same way about me, I still love you."

"Thanks, Krystal," Fox replied, turning away from her and opening the door. Krystal watched as he exited the apartment, and her eyes lingered on the door long after it had clicked shut. Eventually, Fox's thought patterns disappeared from her mind as he departed from the premises, leaving her alone with only her thoughts to keep her company. With a deep sigh, she looked down and fastened two of the buttons on her shirt before standing up and looking out the balcony window behind her bed.

As she observed the metropolis surrounding her and watched as the sun reached its peak in the noon sky, she pondered Fox's statement and worried that he may have been more correct than she would have liked.

"_I'm sorry. You turned so quickly that I'm worried you'd do it again if someone like your father showed up in the future."_

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

Stepping out of the taxi from the return trip, Fox set foot on the concrete sidewalk outside the sprawling private hangar area where the team stored the _Great Fox_ when it was not in orbit. A barbed wire fence surrounded the area, which contained five buildings in all. The condition of the structures was not superb by any means, but it was at least acceptable. The largest of the warehouses held the _Great Fox_, and as Fox looked at it, he noticed the opened roof.

Sliding his key into the lock on the main gate, he unlatched it and pushed it open before stepping inside and locking it again. Several hundred feet separated him from the main hangar, set in a less-than desirable part of Corneria City simply because it would not have been permitted to be built anywhere else. A side entrance allowed him access to the building, and upon stepping inside, he noticed Falco leaning against one of the ship's colossal landing struts.

Hoping that the loudmouthed pilot would not bring up Krystal again, Fox asked him, "How much longer until we're ready to leave?"

"About seven minutes," Falco replied before changing the topic and inquiring, "So, how was your girlfriend?"

Falco's suggestive tone of voice tipped Fox off to what he really meant in his question, prompting Fox to blush. Shaking his head, he answered, "I don't think you understand the two of us. Trust me, it's nothing like what you think it is."

"Whatever you say, Foxie," Falco smirked, switching his stance and leaning on the landing strut with his weight on his other leg. "Anyway, you should probably head inside. Peppy came out here looking for you a minute ago, and he didn't look very happy."

"Noted," Fox replied, turning away from Falco and walking towards the long loading ramp leading into the ship's mid-fuselage hangar. Inside the sea of silver metal, the team's Arwings hung from their ceiling-mounted hooks, while the Cerinian transport ship Fox and Krystal had used to escape Cerinia rested on the hangar floor. Across from it on the right side, two Landmaster tanks sat motionless, waiting for someone to use them. As he climbed the steps leading to the main hallway doors, he recalled that his last mission requiring a Landmaster had taken place three years prior to the present date. He also remembered that the team used to own four of them, but had been forced to sell off two of the vehicles along with Slippy's Blue-Marine in order to avoid going bankrupt during their recent dry spell.

Things were much better now, however. Although Fox loved the current _Great Fox_, the enormous wealth he had acquired over the course of his previous adventure burned a searing hole in his pocket in less than a week. With Slippy's guidance, he had approved the purchase of a new dreadnaught with armor and firepower capabilities that dwarfed those of the current ship. Although Fox didn't know if he would ever need said capabilities, he still felt fond of the idea of owning a ship more powerful than ninety-eight percent of the vessels in the Cornerian fleet.

Stepping into the ship's bridge, Fox noticed Slippy running his fingers across the large holographic control panel that operated most of the ship's systems. While he set to work readying the ship for liftoff, Peppy rotated in his seat next to the frog and locked eyes with Fox. His expression betrayed a certain level of frustration, although he did not seem angry.

"What's up, Peppy?" asked Fox, descending the stairs from the top level of the bridge and approaching the old pilot.

Sighing, Peppy replied, "You know, it would have been nice for you to stick around and help us get the ship ready."

"You didn't ask Falco to help, and I thought you could handle it. The systems are mostly automated, anyway."

Peppy shook his head. "You really think it would be a good idea to have Falco work on the ship? I didn't think so, either. Listen, Fox – we all know where you went after we got the job from Pepper."

"So? Why does that matter?" asked Fox.

"In the grand scheme of things, it's not all that important," Peppy replied. "I just wanted to suggest something to you."

"What's that?"

"I think you need to make a decision about what you're going to do with Krystal. You've told me that she's able to make a living for herself, so she doesn't need you coming around all the time trying to offer her help. But you do it anyway, even though you claim that you're not in a relationship with her."

Fox crossed his arms. "What are you suggesting, Peppy?"

"I'm suggesting that you either give her some distance or take your relationship with her more seriously. If you keep doing what you're doing now, you're not going to do anyone any favors. You're going to make yourself a hassle to both this team and to Krystal."

Sighing, Fox replied, "I've been thinking the same thing. I just don't know what to do about it."

"Well, I'm not going to be the one to tell you what to do, Fox. That's your decision. I just wanted to bring it to your attention. If you'd like to spend more time with Krystal at the expense of the team, I can accept that. But if you're going to go back and forth on this, I'm going to say something about it."

Fox nodded. "I understand. I'll think this over and make a decision about it."

"Good. Now, you'd better get Falco. We're cleared for takeoff. I'm going to turn the engines on in two minutes, and after we clear the orbital gate, our full focus will be on getting into Asgard Industries. I suggest you and Falco go in on the ground. Slippy and I will monitor your progress from the transport ship that's in the hangar right now unless you have other ideas."

"I think that sounds good," Fox replied. "I've been in there before, but I really don't know what to expect from this."

"None of us do, Fox. No plan survives the first wave, you know."

"Too true. We'll call it as it goes, then."

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):_  


_Hopefully this wasn't too long of a wait for you. Personally, I was pleased with the turnaround time between chapter 1 and this chapter. It seems that my writing muse has been cooperating a bit more than usual, so I'll be sure to make as much of that as I can.  
_

_Also, special thanks to my brother for working up the new N3 cover art! Sorry, but he probably won't be taking any commissions anytime soon. He won't do my Parallax artwork either, since he (like many others) doesn't give a crap about that story.  
_

_In addition, I have set up a poll on my profile page. Check it out if you'd like. I plan to keep it open for a fairly long time to get the largest possible amount of feedback. The poll question is: with a new Star Fox game confirmed to be in the works, which of the ideas in the poll would you be the most likely to buy into? Although I'd love to get everyone's opinion on that, guest votes will not be accepted. This is because the site does not allow them, which means that to vote, you'd have to read the poll and then review to answer it. Since I don't want to deal with poll spam that has nothing to do with the story, I'm not going to take unregistered votes.  
_


	3. Breaching Asgard

**③ Breaching Asgard ③**

With their blasters armed, Fox and Falco leaned against the sides of two decrepit buildings within five hundred feet of Asgard Industries' southwest loading dock. Fox had chosen the area based on his prior knowledge of it from his first facility infiltration. To him, it seemed hard to believe that he had been standing in the exact same alleyway less than a month ago, preparing to embark on a similar mission. This time, the danger seemed lower than it had the last time he had entered the building, but many other aspects of the operation prompted him to feel a strong sense of déjà vu.

A long, empty service road snaked in front of the loading area, bridging the gap between it and the abandoned low-income apartment compound where Fox and Falco waited. Noticing his leader staring wistfully at the sprawling industrial complex across the street, Falco asked, "What's wrong, Fox?"

Fox looked at Falco out of the corner of his eye and answered, "That building gives me nightmares when I sleep. I lost two close friends in there in one day about three weeks ago. I almost died in there, too."

"What do you mean? Who were these friends?"

"I'll have to give you the full story sometime soon. The short version is that my cousin Scarlet jumped on a grenade to save my life, even though I hated her guts at the time. My boss during the operation managed to have her rebuilt, but she was never the same after that point. When she died for good later on, nobody felt sad – and that also included her. This building also reminds me of the time when I lost Krystal."

Falco gave him a confused look. "But Krystal's alive. How did you lose her?"

Feeling the hands of regret beginning to clutch at his heart, he shook his head, pointed at the Asgard complex, and mumbled, "Before I went in there, Krystal was a different person. I was absolutely in love with her. After the mission, something happened with her that I don't want to talk about. She doesn't want me to talk about it either."

"I don't get it," Falco replied.

"You don't have to get it. Now, let's move. Keep your eyes open, and don't let your guard down for any reason."

"What, do you think I'm Slippy?" Falco commented.

Fox looked over his shoulder and scowled. "Trust me – if you had been in my shoes last time, you'd see where I'm coming from. There's still a bump on the back of my head from what happened when I let my guard down in there." Taking one last look at the facility across the street, he said, "Follow me."

A brisk wind breezed through Fox's fur as he stepped out of the alleyway, reminding him that winter still lingered in Skallis's second district. At least this time he had prepared for it by wearing heavier clothing. Without the need for extreme subtlety, he had foregone the espionage-oriented apparel and weaponry that he had employed during his first visit to Asgard Industries. Crossing the empty street and stepping into the concrete-covered loading area in front of the building's warehouse division, he noted that none of the lights around the facility were on. Considering that Asgard Industries never truly stopped working, the absence of light suggested that something was awry. Even stranger, not a single person seemed to be anywhere nearby.

"_So, Pepper literally meant that Asgard went dark,"_ Fox thought, walking around a large dumpster that he recalled from last time.

With Falco keeping a close gap between himself and his leader, Fox followed his route from his first visit and walked into a small loading garage on the front side of the enormous complex. As before, boxes occupied the edges of the room and almost reached to the ten-foot ceiling in some cases. He grunted in surprise at the garage door being open, but he said nothing and motioned towards the interior door that he knew would lead into the main warehouse area where he had nearly failed his previous objective.

As Fox placed his hand on the doorknob and turned it, Falco grabbed Fox's shoulder and whispered, "Did you ever get the feeling that we're being watched somehow?"

"This place has hundreds of security cameras. I wouldn't be surprised if we were," Fox replied. "Since the facility seems to be down, I wouldn't think too much of it. Keep your guard up and be ready for anything, though."

"That's not what I meant, but fine, whatever," Falco conceded, allowing Fox to open the door and step into the pitch-black warehouse space that lay on the other side.

"Flashlights on," Fox ordered, arming his blaster's side-mounted light and using it to scan the warehouse. Apart from his and Falco's footsteps, absolute silence filled the stadium-sized room. "This really doesn't feel right," he whispered while glancing at the warehouse aisles and shelves as they walked down the central aisle.

"I know. It's so quiet that I can feel it," Falco replied.

At that moment, Fox's wrist communicator gave off a quick chirp. Stopping cold in the center of the aisle, he looked at the screen and noticed Slippy attempting to contact him. He moved to the side, into the slight cover of the aisle to the left, and raised his communicator to his lips. "Fox here. What is it?"

Even from the safety of the team's Cerinian transport ship that he and Peppy had elected to use as their mission command vehicle, Slippy's voice radiated fear and deep concern. "Fox, we're running thermal scans of the Asgard facility, and we've confirmed ten active life forms inside the building. They're all in the military wing, close to the hangar where you found the Demiurge's flagship the last time you were in there."

Fox's heart rate began to spike. "Is there anybody near me and Falco?"

"Negative," Slippy replied. "It's just you in that area."

"Got it. Thanks."

"No problem, Fox…although I'm starting to think that you're not going to be getting out of there with the researchers."

Fox replied, "I don't think so, either. The mission was to get in, find out what's going on here, and then get out. Rescuing the researchers was a request that Pepper knew was a long shot anyway."

Closing the line, Fox turned to Falco, who had overheard his conversation with Slippy. Both of them exhaled and stared at the door at the end of the aisle, knowing that their mission had taken a rapid turn for the worse. When Fox made no movements, Falco muttered, "Who do you think is in here? What could they possibly want with those researchers?"

Fox grimaced, and if there had been more light in the warehouse, Falco would have noticed a trace of fear crawling onto his face. "I have a few ideas."

"Speak up, then. I want to know who we might be dealing with here."

Fox began walking towards the distant door ahead of him and replied, "I'm going to have to explain a bit more about what happened before you came back, because I think it has something to do with what's going on now."

Falco shrugged. "You told me you were going to explain it eventually anyhow."

"Yes, I did. Now's not the right time for it, but I'll fill you in on the part that matters right now. The last time I was in here, I found out about a Cerinian named Neron Tæro – a.k.a. "The Demiurge." He was using Asgard Industries as a cloak for his operation and his army of cloned soldiers. Although most of them were probably killed when Cerinia broke up, some of them may have survived. And if enough of them are still out there, there's a good chance that they're going to try to avenge their boss."

"Are you suggesting that they're here right now?" asked Falco. "If they are, what are we dealing with?"

"It could be anyone, but I have a sick feeling that tells me that they're probably who I think they are. Now that I think of it, I should have brought Krystal with us. She would be able to tell us right now if there are any Cerinians in this building. I had my suspicions before we left, but I didn't want to bring her into this."

"How does them being Cerinians affect anything, though? It's not like they're super-powerful or anything."

Cutting Falco off, Fox retorted, "Actually, these Cerinians were much larger than normal ones. And, if you didn't know, most Cerinians are telepaths."

Falco stopped in place and stared at Fox with wide eyes. "Are you telling me that they know we're here right now?"

"Yes," Fox answered.

Grabbing Fox's shoulder, Falco snapped, "Are you kidding, Fox? We need to get the hell out of here then! If there's ten of them and two of us, and they know exactly where we are, we're screwed if we don't get out of here now!"

"Falco, if we bail out on this mission, Pepper is going to be ticked. I don't think we have any choice but to find out who's in here and figure out what they're doing. It could be someone else, you know."

"Yeah, sure it could. But tell me, who's going to break into this huge facility and shut it down when a team of top Cornerian researchers just happens to be in the building looking for a secret weapon that would give anyone who had it a huge advantage? It's too much of a coincidence, Fox. Can you think of anyone else who would do this?"

"I really can't," Fox admitted. "Hold on – I'm going to call Slippy and see if there's anything new on his end."

Punching in Slippy's frequency, Fox brought his communicator to his lips and waited for Slippy to respond.

"Fox? What is it? Did you find something?"

"No, but I had a thought that made me uncomfortable. I think some of the Demiurge's men might be involved in this."

Slippy paused for a moment and mulled over Fox's suggestion before replying, "I don't know, Fox. There's some unusual stuff happening near the north warehouse area at the back of the facility."

"What kind of unusual stuff?"

"Well, in the last fifteen minutes, Peppy and I have noticed a few transport ships flying in and out of the area. All of them have Asgard Industries markings. I don't know what that means, but it seems really strange. Oh wait…"

"What is it?"

"One more transport showed up, and it has the Demiurge's emblem on it."

Fox's heart skipped a beat. "Okay – we're pulling out. We don't stand a chance against those monsters."

Slippy hesitated for a moment, then replied, "Um…that's going to be a problem, Fox. Right now, I'm watching the loading dock that you used to enter the building. There's a transport touching down on the concrete and dropping off soldiers outside the loading doors as we speak. They're trying to block your exit."

For a moment, Fox forgot to speak. Transfixed with fear, he mumbled, "Okay. Thanks, Slippy. We'll figure something out."

While Fox terminated his call with Slippy, Falco scowled and pointed his finger at him. "Oh, now this is just great. Too bad you couldn't have had your sudden burst of logic a little bit earlier, Einstein!"

"Calm down, Falco. There's always a way out. We just have to find it. I still have my map of this complex in my wrist unit. There are probably hundreds of exits in this place."

"Then find one, dammit!" the avian huffed.

Fox stamped his foot on the ground in anger. "First things first – let's get through that door up ahead and put some distance between us and the guys outside."

Falco did not need to wait for Fox to suggest running. Sprinting down the aisle, Fox and Falco pushed through the double doors at the opposite end of the warehouse with their blasters armed and illuminated. The narrow hallway on the other side of the door split off in a 'T' shape with a fork to the right; and without slowing down, Fox directed Falco towards the adjacent hallway and leaned into the turn. As he turned into the corridor, his feet lost traction on the dusty floor, causing him to lose his footing and slide into the left wall. Grunting in pain, he stood up and shook himself off before turning to Falco and ordering him, "Keep your light on. I'm going to open my map and find us a way out of here."

Falco nodded and held up his blaster while Fox fell in line behind him. Fox opened his wrist interface and toggled through its many menus, forcing him and Falco to slow to a jog instead of an all-out sprint. After ten seconds, Fox bit his lip and growled, "I've got the map pulled up, and all of the main exits are either in the area where we came in or off to the side where we could easily be flanked. Our best option is to run as quickly as we can and try to find an exit on either the east or west end of the building."

Falco looked over his shoulder while running and retorted, "That's a nice plan and all, but what are we supposed to do once we get outside? It's not like Slippy and Peppy are going to be able to just land the transport and pick us up. If those freaks are already in the area, Pep and Slip are going to be asking for it."

Fox cursed under his breath. "You're right. We'll figure something out. I know the Arwings can pilot themselves if someone sets coordinates for them. I'm just afraid that they'll get shot down in transit. They can't attack or defend themselves in autopilot mode. Damn it! Now's the time when that transmission device on the upgraded _Great Fox_ would have been really useful. Too bad it's still being outfitted on Corneria."

"You keep saying that you'll figure something out, but sooner or later, we're going to have to do something, Fox."

The distant sound of voices reached Fox's ears as he and Falco raced down the dark hallway, passing numerous doors and the storage closet that he had taken refuge in the last time he had been in the Asgard complex.

"Falco, they're gaining on us."

"Tell me something I don't know, Fox!" Falco shouted. "Now's the time to stop playing with your stupid wrist com and run!"

While Falco dug in his heels and ran as quickly as his feet would allow him to while holding up his gun, Fox glanced over his shoulder and saw a distant quartet of lights behind him. He wanted to believe that they weren't gaining on him, but he feared that his senses were telling him otherwise. At that moment, his wrist unit chirped, indicating a call from Slippy.

"Now is not the time for this, Slippy," Fox grunted, attempting to keep up with the long-limbed Falco, whose adrenaline had kicked in fully.

Feeling too afraid to look back, Fox pushed himself to keep up with Falco as the dingy hallways began to turn to white, indicating their transition from the warehouse area to Asgard's corporate wing. Rooms filled with cubicles raced by, including the room where Fox had been forced to attack a guard with an office chair and steal his clothes. If the situation had not been so dire, he would have chuckled when he noticed that the door handle that he had destroyed was still not fixed. Struggling for breath, he warned Falco, "If we go too much farther, we're going to be in the military wing where the main group of Cerinians are."

Falco took a quick look over his shoulder and replied, "I don't see them behind us. Don't stop running, but I think you can afford to call Slippy back. There's got to be some place that he can land around here."

"Got it. Hang on."

Although he hated to disengage his holographic map of Asgard Industries, he slowed to a trot and punched in Slippy's contact information. Putting his communicator on its 'speaker' setting, Fox resumed running and waited until Slippy's panicked voice shot out of the device's speakers. "Fox! Are you alright?"

"We're fine, Slippy. Listen – we're going to need you to find a landing spot where you can pick us up. If you can find one and tell us where to go to get there, we might be able to get out of this mess. I think we've pulled ahead of the guys chasing us."

With a concerned voice, Slippy replied, "You're right. You've pulled out a bit of a lead, but there's one more problem."

"What now?" Fox barked.

"I'm seeing a good landing spot that's kind of out of the way, but it's on the northeast end of the building outside the military wing. You're getting close to that area, you know."

"I know, Slippy. Just send me the coordinates and I'll use my map to find it."

"Okay, Fox. Please…be careful. I don't want to lose you guys."

"Don't worry. We'll be fine," Fox answered, although his voice did not reflect an air of confidence.

Closing the call, Fox pulled up his map once again and turned towards Falco, who looked winded after running for his life for several minutes. "Be ready for anything. If we run into too many Cerinians, it's game over for us. If you see any hallways that go to the right, take them."

Falco nodded in response. With the only illumination coming from Falco's blaster, a hallway to the right opened up at a thirty degree angle relative to the wide corridor that they had been following up to that point. Fox recognized it as a hallway that he had taken during his last visit to Asgard and knew that it would lead towards the northeast end of the building where Slippy had located a suitable landing platform. Unfortunately, he also recalled that the Demiurge's hangar was located in the same area.

He knew the danger of the situation but refused to tell Falco about it, knowing that the loudmouthed bird was already angry enough as it was. Resuming their sprint, Fox and Falco ran into the angled hallway, which had formerly been filled with Asgard employees, weapons paraphernalia, and technological gadgets with military purposes in mind. As he eyed the rooms and stations while straining to keep up with Falco, he noted that any weapons that had once been in the building had been cleared out entirely. Naked metal, glass, and plastic greeted his eyes in every room that he passed.

"Holy shit, Fox," Falco muttered, pointing to something up ahead.

"What is it? Oh no…"

On the edges of the hallway, seven corpses lay scattered about the floor. Although he knew that he and Falco did not have much time to stop, Fox slowed to a walk and looked for any visible causes of their deaths. He had hoped that they would reflect a different reality than the one he expected, but as a confirmation of his worst fears, most of them looked to have been torn apart by massive bursts of kinetic energy consistent with the combat staffs used by the Demiurge's Cerinian elites. On the two faces of the canine bodies that looked even remotely recognizable as animals were a pair of horrified, anguished expressions whose mere sight chilled Fox's blood.

"Falco, it's just as bad as I thought. These are the elites that we're dealing with."

"Great vote of confidence, Fox," Falco quipped. "How much farther is it to the landing platform?"

Stopping in the center of the hallway, Fox consulted his holographic wrist-mounted map and answered, "It's a quarter mile from here. The map says that we'll need to find a staircase to the second floor and then use an auxiliary exit to get to the building's exterior. This hallway should take us to the stairs we need."

"Great. Lead the way, then," Falco replied. "I'll keep my light on for you."

No sooner had he spoken than his flashlight flickered and powered down.

Fox frowned and narrowed his eyes. "Did you really forget to put new batteries into that thing before the mission?"

Turning his head toward Fox, Falco muttered, "Um…yeah. Sorry, but you'll have to use yours. Take off your wrist com and give it to me. I'll keep the map active for you."

"What? You – giving directions?" Fox protested.

"You got a better idea, fuzzball? I don't know about you, but I don't want the guy with the light being distracted when we could be about to walk right into a trap."

"Ok, fine – I see your point," Fox admitted, unstrapping his wrist com and handing it to Falco, who fastened it on his winged right hand. He hated the fact that if he needed to touch the screen, he would have to do it with his left hand; but the larger issues at hand prevented him from complaining about it. After turning his gun-mounted flashlight back on, Fox raised it and started running once again.

From behind him, Falco hollered, "The stairs we want are three hundred feet ahead on the right."

A ceiling mounted sign marked "Hangars 9-11" with a white arrow pointing to the right indicated the aforementioned staircase that the map suggested would lead to the exterior landing pad. Despite his best efforts, Fox slowed his pace at the recollection of Hangar 11 and shuddered in fear. Noticing his counterpart's uneasy motions, Falco slowed down and grabbed Fox's arm as they began climbing the stairs. "What's wrong, Fox?"

"Hangar 11…it brings back so many bad memories. That's where it all started to go wrong."

Gritting his beak, Falco replied, "This isn't the time for that, pal. After we get up these stairs, we'll have about eight hundred feet left to go until the exit to the landing pad. You can talk about your bad memories all you want when we get back into the transport."

Fox shook his head. "You're right. Since we're so close, you'd better call Slippy and ask if he's in position to pick us up."

"You got it, Fox," Falco replied.

Awkwardly tapping on Fox's borrowed interface with his left hand, Falco waited until the channel cleared and asked, "Slippy, what's your status? Are you ready to get us the hell out of here?"

A brief pause from Slippy's end of the line created an eerie silence as Fox and Falco reached the top of the staircase and entered a low hallway containing numerous offices that overlooked the hangars on the floor below. Then, the frog's voice came out with a whisper. "Yeah, I'm in position; but you guys are going to need to move quickly. You're right above Hangar 11, and if the Demiurge's troops are in there, they know exactly where you are."

"Okay Slippy, just be ready to pick us up. This is going to go quickly," Falco whispered in reply before closing the call and giving Fox a look that told him, "You heard what he said. Run for your life if you want to make it out of here."

Despite feeling worn out after running across most of the length of Asgard Industries, Fox's adrenaline helped him to ignore the pain in his lungs as he sprinted down the hallway while looking for the exit leading to the outdoor landing platform. Taking a quick peek at the map on his wrist, Falco pointed towards an upcoming hallway on the right and shouted, "This one!"

Fox's feet nearly slid out from under him as he turned into the hallway. The exit corridor ended in a left turn following a short flight of steps that Fox and Falco leaped over to avoid having to slow down; but before it came to an end, another hallway to the left presented itself as an option. Holding up his hand, Fox slid to a stop on the dusty floor and looked down both of the two parallel hallways. Not having the map to help him decide which one to take, he looked to Falco for help.

"These hallways are so tiny on this readout, but I'm pretty sure it's the one at the end," Falco stated, pointing to his right. "It looks like it turns left here and then cuts to the right, where there's a door to the landing pad."

Shaking his head, Fox breathlessly replied, "I don't know why, but my instincts are telling me to take this first one here. My father always said to trust my instincts, and they haven't let me down yet."

Falco glanced at his map again and then looked at Fox with a confused expression. "The map says this hallway is a dead end. I can't even figure out what it's here for. It doesn't look like there's anything in it at all. Really Fox, I think your instincts are off for once."

"I'm going to take my chances," Fox replied. "Follow my lead. If it doesn't work out, we'll turn around and take the other hallway."

"No way, Fox. I'm going the way that I know is going to get us out of here. Are you out of your mind? That's a dead end service hallway! We can't afford to waste any more time!"

Stepping into the corridor, Fox looked over his shoulder and said, "According to the map, the hangar below us doesn't exist. I don't see why it couldn't be wrong about this, too."

In the back of his mind, he wondered if Falco was right and that he was being delusional – or worse yet, being deceived by some outside agency. As he made his way down the narrow hallway, he noticed light coming in from the left fifty feet ahead of him. He thought to look behind him and see if Falco truly had left him, but he had little doubt in his mind that he had.

"_I don't even know what I'm doing. Falco's right – this hallway doesn't lead to anywhere. Why did I feel like I was supposed to come up here, though?"_

As he reached the source of the light, he looked to his left and realized that the narrow hallway functioned as a rudimentary overlook station for the hangar below. Staring at the vast expanse of Hangar 11 below him, he saw several people milling about on the gray, tiled floor. He counted ten figures total, but two in particular stood out to him. In the center of the floor, a red-furred vixen wearing a white button-down shirt and a short, black skirt sat with her hands and feet bound with steel cables. Less than ten feet to her left stood a massive hulk of a Cerinian male, holding one of the Demiurge's black combat staffs with his right hand. He wore only a pair of black pants, leaving his heavily scarred blue and white chest uncovered. His height did not strike Fox as abnormal, but his chiseled, muscular figure seemed almost freakish to him. Around the perimeter of the room, seven of the Demiurge's elite Cerinian soldiers stood in place, holding their staffs and assault rifles at the ready.

Perking up his ears, Fox listened as the oversized Cerinian paced around the bound vixen and spoke to her with a cruel, pitiless voice punctuated with the same Cerinian accent that Fox had grown accustomed to hearing from Krystal. As he turned to the side, Fox noticed a red hieroglyphic tattoo that looked to have been etched into his shoulder rather than painted onto it. _"I'll have to ask Krystal about this,"_ he thought.

For the moment, he put his thoughts aside and listened as the Cerinian moved closer to the vixen in the center of the floor and grabbed her shoulder, shouting, "You saw what I did to your friends, and I'll tell you that a far worse fate awaits you if you don't tell me what I need to hear. One last time – where is our flagship? Where are your people keeping the _Æsir_?"

Instead of replying, the vixen whimpered and looked at the floor.

From above the hangar, Fox clenched his teeth and watched as the Cerinian drew his staff and swung it into the vixen's back. Screaming in pain, she leaned forward and sobbed as blood began to seep through the back of her shirt. The oversized Cerinian circled around to face his prisoner and knelt in front of her. "That was nothing compared to what I'll do to you if you don't start talking. Now, tell me where our ship is being kept, and I'll let you go."

"Liar. You'll kill me regardless of what I say, just like all the others," the vixen sobbed.

Even from the distance of the observation hall, Fox noticed the Cerinian baring his teeth in rage. "So be it, then," he growled, standing up and moving away from her. "Before I do anything else to you, maybe you would like to know that one of your 'heroes' is in this building right now. He's been assigned to get you out of here. In fact…" he closed his eyes, then reopened them and stared directly at Fox. "…He's watching us right now. Perhaps you would like to see what happens to those who choose to resist us."

Fox froze as the sound of the vixen's screams reached his ears. He turned to leave the hallway, but before he could move, the Cerinian shouted, "Don't even bother trying to escape. It's already too late for you." With that, he turned to the Cerinian elite behind him and ordered, "Blow it."

Yelling at the top of his lungs, Fox raced for the hallway entrance in hopes of escaping the building via the route that Falco had suggested. He knew that Slippy and Peppy would not have left without him and that they were almost certainly still outside on the landing platform, even if Falco had already boarded the transport. The beam from his blaster-mounted flashlight bounced wildly across the floors and walls as he ran. Only twenty feet separated him from the end of the hallway, when a sudden blast rocked the structure and sent him flying to his feet. A concussive, explosive roar filled the air, and debris flew in every direction around him. His vision went black almost immediately, and his head swam in the darkness that surrounded him. A moment too late, he realized that he had been baited into the hallway by none other than the muscle-bound Cerinian himself when a certain escape awaited him a hundred feet down the adjacent hallway.

Pain shot through his every joint – especially his knees – and he felt his heartbeat growing weaker by the second. As he slipped away, the last sound he heard was Falco screaming, "Fox! I told you not to go in there! Fox! Are you okay? Talk to me! Say something!"

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):_

_For some reason, this chapter was absolutely agonizing for me to write. The words would simply not come on this one. If I remember, I wrote the first quarter of the chapter a week after the last update, but then I got stuck with Fox and Falco in the warehouse for over two weeks. The next chapters should be a bit easier to write, hopefully.  
_

_Also, I have tallied up the results from my most recent poll, and the overwhelming favorite choice for what you'd like to see as the next Star Fox game was the gritty M-rated mercenary-based option. The gap between that option and second place was so large that it is absolutely conclusive to me. I'll admit that I also voted for that one. I wonder what that result says about the fanbase - at least the fanbase on ff . net?_


	4. Roommates and Mad Scientists

**④ Roommates and Mad Scientists ④**

In the well-appointed waiting room in the Gaia Corporation-owned Skallis hospital, Peppy, Slippy, and Falco sat and waited for news related to Fox. While Falco stared at the spiritless propaganda being blasted through the telescreen on the wall ahead of him and the rest of the team, Peppy thumbed through a lawn and garden magazine that someone had left on the glass end table to the left of his seat.

"_Funny – I don't think I've seen a single lawn or garden in this whole place. It's a concrete jungle here_," Peppy chuckled to himself as he studied an expert's opinion on pruning rose bushes.

To his right, Slippy held the detached main panel of his wrist communicator in his hands and scrolled through a smattering of medical sites that he hoped would give him some idea of what to expect from Fox's procedure. The horrid mental image of Fox's battered, bloodstained body being loaded into the _Great Fox _on a medical cart still horrified him. Worse yet, the vulpine's legs had not survived the explosion intact; and based on the latest information from the ER, prosthetic replacements would be necessary if Fox ever wanted to walk again. While Slippy saw nothing jarring about prosthetic limbs, the recollection of Fox's story about Scarlet's reconstruction unnerved him. He knew that Fox had sustained numerous injuries while on Cerinia, and this most recent incident amounted to his third major medical issue in two weeks. Although he refused to say it to either of his counterparts, he feared that Fox would not last much longer at the current rate. As it was, he had been declared near death after suffering the effects of the blast inside the Asgard complex.

The noise from the telescreen on the wall continued, with a clearly deceptive female raccoon news anchor declaring that the Skallisian republic was not in any way affiliated with Salvatore Pietro's mob family. Knowing the truth based on what Fox had told him about his last visit to the dystopian planet, Peppy looked at Slippy out of the corner of his eye and whispered, "It's a good thing we don't live here."

"I know. This place is creeping me out. I can't wait to get out of here," Slippy replied, quietly enough so that the four other patrons in the waiting room could not hear him.

Noticing a white-coated lupine doctor emerging from the hall to his left, Falco nudged Slippy and said, "Hey – this might be our chance."

"What do you mean, Falco?" Slippy asked.

"I mean that they might be finished with Fox," Falco explained.

Frowning, Slippy replied, "Falco, you know that Fox will have to stay here at least a week, right? There's no way he's just going to walk out of the hospital after an explosion like the one back at Asgard."

Falco frowned and slouched forward in his chair with his hands holding his head up. "Damn it."

While Falco sulked, the lupine doctor approached the trio and told Peppy, "We've finished the procedure. Your friend needed both legs replaced below the knees, and he also lost his right eye to some shrapnel. We replaced it with a synthetic substitute, but don't worry – it will look natural if you give him a few weeks to get acclimated to it. He also lost an amount of blood that would normally be fatal. It's an absolute miracle that he's still alive. If you want to see him, we've moved him to room 1220."

"Thanks," Peppy replied. "Can you take us to him?"

"Certainly."

A brief walk through a series of hallways and a ride up to the twelfth floor in one of the hospital's elevators brought Peppy, Slippy, and Falco to the door of Fox's temporary living quarters. Pulling down on the door handle, the lupine doctor turned to the three behind him and warned them, "Be careful with him. He's still not fully himself yet."

Peppy nodded in silent agreement and stepped into the room, followed by his two teammates. Fox lay on a white medical bed with his head propped up by two pillows. IV tubes flowed into his arms, while a number of nearby monitoring devices kept a close watch on his vital signs. Considering that the lights were off, Peppy expected Fox to be asleep, but to his surprise, he spoke up the instant that his friends entered the room.

"Hey guys. Are you alright?"

"I should ask the same thing about you," Peppy replied, using a borderline gruff tone of voice that stemmed from his deep concern about Fox's condition.

Fox sighed. "Why lie? I feel terrible. This fake eye is killing me. Not literally, but you get the idea."

"The doctor said you'd get used to it eventually," said Peppy.

"I'm sure. The same could probably be said about my legs, too."

Slippy came to Fox's bedside and commented, "You know, you're going to be a cyborg soon at this rate."

His comment had not been meant to be taken seriously, but Fox felt as if it had. Memories of Scarlet's reconstructed body flashed through his mind, with her unnatural perfection and odd behavior patterns causing his breathing to quicken. The quiet beeping of the heart rate monitor off to the side of his bed increased to match the tempo of his heart, after which Slippy realized that his comment had not gone over well.

"Sorry about that, Fox."

Fox reached out his hand and grabbed Slippy's arm. "No offense taken, Slip. I'll just have to be more careful next time."

Standing in the center of the room, Falco remarked, "Yeah, maybe you should avoid trusting your instincts and going into dead end service hallways that also happen to be rigged to blow."

Fox raised his eyebrows. "You don't have to rub it in, Falco. I know what I did. I should have known better. I knew there were Cerinians in the building, and I should have known that they would try to get into my mind."

Peppy's oversized rabbit ears twitched as he asked, "Well, it seems like you saw something. What was it? Is it anything that we can report to General Pepper?"

A look of concern appeared on Fox's face. "The Demiurge's troops want to know where their battleship is. If they find out, who knows what they'll do. When Falco and I were in the complex, it looked like they had cleared out all the weapons, too."

Scratching his mustache, Peppy grumbled, "Where would they take all of them, though? We don't even know what they want."

"If they're anything like the Demiurge, we already know what they want," Fox replied.

"What? Gematria?"

"I don't know about that, but we know who they are. When you get back to the _Great Fox_, tell General Pepper about them. He'll have a better idea about what to do with them than we will."

Peppy nodded. At the same time, Slippy's communicator chirped. Fumbling in an attempt to silence the ringer, he muttered, "Not now, Dad."

While Slippy shook his head and clipped his communicator back into its wrist mount, Peppy looked to Fox and asked, "Should I let Krystal know about what happened to you?"

Fox's expression dropped. For several seconds, he stared at Peppy before he replied, "No. She doesn't need to hear any more bad news. You can tell her if she asks about me, but otherwise, don't say anything to her."

"I understand. If I were you, I'm not sure I'd want her to know, either. Listen, Fox – we're not going to abandon you, but this planet is not a good place for us to stay. I think you'll be fine in this hospital, but we're going to head back to the _Great Fox_ for the time being."

"So, you're not going to abandon me, but…" Fox joked.

Peppy returned an awkward nod. "Well, kind of. We've got some things to talk to General Pepper about, and we're going to need to resupply if we want to make it back to Corneria."

"Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and take care of it," Fox groused. "I'm not going to be going anywhere for a little while. If my condition improves enough for me to get out of here early, I'll be the first to let you know. I don't want to be stuck on this planet any more than you do. By the way, do you know what happened to Felix? I would have thought I'd have run into him at some point. This is his hospital, after all."

Peppy crossed his arms and looked away for a moment. "Um…I saw something on the news about his funeral being held today."

Fox's eyes widened in disbelief. "What happened to him?"

"According to the news broadcast, he killed himself. He was found in his office two weeks ago with a gun in his hand and a hole in his skull."

With a gravelly voice, Fox replied, "So that's why he forwarded all of his money to me. I was wondering about that."

A long pause broke out in the hospital room until Peppy said, "We'll leave you to yourself now, Fox. As soon as you're ready to leave, give me a call."

"Sure thing, Peppy. Hopefully this won't happen again."

"It had better not, Fox. I've lost too many friends and loved ones already. I don't want to lose you, too."

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

Krystal hated Corneria City. It was not as if she hadn't already vented about her frustrations to Fox, but the longer she lived in the metropolis, the more she grew to dislike it. Every day after leaving her evening job as a martial arts instructor at a downtown gym, she passed a cosmetics shop built into the corner of a sprawling downtown mall that contained more than eighty stores despite only occupying a space of four blocks. Each day, the temptation to walk through the shop's sliding glass doors, buy several cans of fur dye, and slather herself with it in her apartment grew stronger. Her telepathy refused to stay quiet when a passing person ogled her, especially after she left the gym wearing a tight-fitting tank top and athletic pants. She knew that her blue fur acted as the catalyst for her unwanted attention – not surprising, as she had not seen a single Cerinian in the city of over ten million people.

Walking with her head down in a useless attempt to avoid having to look at anyone, she pushed open the door to her gym and began her twenty minute trek back to her apartment. As was her custom, she planned to stop at a coffee shop that marked the halfway point of her trip. Today however, she felt compelled to spend her money on fur dye rather than an overpriced decaf latte.

"_I'll make that decision when I get there,"_ she thought.

Two vulpine cyclists raced past her in the bike lane on the road to the right of the sidewalk and gawked at her, causing her to shudder and lose her focus to the point of nearly wandering into an active intersection and being struck by a car. Suddenly regaining her composure, she stopped at the extreme edge of the sidewalk and took a deep breath. The fact that her standing on the street corner created a distraction for the traffic irritated her to no end; and when four drivers stared at her while making right turns, she cursed under her breath in Cerinian. She tried to ignore the numerous pedestrians around her at the crosswalk, knowing that all of their eyes were on her. After what seemed like an eternity, the traffic signal allowed her to cross the street and separate from the swarm of people around her.

A quarter mile walk through the city's largest consumer center brought Krystal to the front doors of the intimate coffee shop, where the simplistic title "East Corneria Coffee Co." overlooked the street below from its perch above the glass-covered side of the large building that housed it. Still looking downwards and trying to ignore the occasional awkward glance, she stepped into the building and raised her eyes. She preferred to visit the coffee shop immediately following work because very few patrons frequented the establishment in the early evening when most people were eating dinner. Still, a small number of people occupied their seats inside. Thankfully, few of them paid much attention to Krystal as she entered the shop.

As her athletic shoes touched the worn wooden floorboards inside the coffee shop, she caught a glimpse of something blue out of the corner of her eye. Her telepathy alerted her to the presence of a familiar set of thought patterns, causing her to look up and lock eyes with another Cerinian vixen sitting at a table in the extreme corner of the room, reading through what looked like a university textbook. Even though she wore a loose-fitting – albeit short – dress with a blue pansy print, it was obvious that she had been physically endowed in ways that Krystal could only dream of. Her blue hair fell to her shoulders and curled at the end, accenting her exotic orange irises that glared at Krystal with shock and bewilderment.

"_Oh no – of all people to run into, why did it have to be _her_?"_

Her eyes alone were enough to give her identity away to Krystal, who recognized her as Hyacinth's daughter Lilac. She was slightly younger than Krystal, but only by a margin of two months, even though she looked and acted much more mature than that.

Krystal knew that there would be no escaping a conversation with her, as the two of them had been close friends during their childhoods on Cerinia, before the High Council claimed Krystal and interned her in the Temple for her order's requisite philosophical and combat training. For a moment, she felt a surge of agony as the memory of killing Hyacinth plagued her mind. Krystal knew that Lilac would be unable to pick up on it due to her weaker telepathy compared to her own, but she realized that she needed to avoid looking alarmed in order to avoid the younger vixen's probing thoughts that, while less developed than hers, could still dig up thoughts and memories if given enough openings.

After ordering a cup of coffee, she nervously made her way to the back corner of the shop where Lilac sat. While Krystal pulled her chair out and sat down, Lilac exclaimed, "Krystal! What are you doing here?"

"I live here now," Krystal replied, hoping that her childhood friend would be content with the short version of her story. "You know that I always wanted to get away and have an adventure somewhere else."

Lilac smiled, setting Krystal at ease without realizing it. "So did I. Looks like we got what we wanted, then. How do you like Corneria City?"

Krystal tried to look upbeat, but her disgust for her surroundings showed. "I really don't like it. I'm always the center of attention, and I hate having everyone staring at me – especially the men. I can't imagine that it's any better for you with a rack like yours."

Lilac briefly looked downwards and then chuckled, "I don't really mind it, actually. If anything, it makes getting dates that much easier."

Scowling, Krystal replied, "You really take after your mother, don't you?"

"What can I say? She has a way of leaving a mark on people," Lilac grinned. "But before you call me a skank, you should know that I always let them off the hook before things get…well, you know."

Krystal rolled her eyes. "Well, good for you."

"Seriously though," Lilac continued, "There's something else that I need to talk to you about. I'm really in trouble right now, but I can't trust anyone enough to help me."

Krystal's eyes widened as the conversation took a sudden serious twist. "What's wrong?"

Collecting herself yet failing to avoid looking afraid, Lilac explained, "When my mom sent me to Corneria and helped me enroll at Central Cornerian University, she told me that she would pay for me to take classes by sending me money every month for school and living costs. Well, I haven't gotten anything for the last two weeks. I've tried calling my mom on Cerinia, but she won't answer. I don't know what's going on. I don't have the money to pay for my apartment, and they're about to kick me out." By this point, she looked ready to burst into tears. "Is there anything you can do to help me? Can I stay with you until this gets cleared up?"

A tear slipped out of Krystal's eye; and although Lilac thought that her friend had shed it out of sympathy for her, it was her guilt from killing Hyacinth and assisting in the destruction of Cerinia that caused her to cry.

"_I have to help her. After what I did to Hyacinth, it's all I can do to make things right."_

Placing her hand on Lilac's, Krystal said, "I don't have much room in my apartment, but you can stay with me if you don't mind sharing a bed. There just isn't going to be enough room for your furniture. Don't worry – I'll help you do something with it."

With misty eyes, Lilac replied, "Thank you. I don't mind sharing a bed. In fact, I always wanted someone to curl up with at night."

"I thought you had your dates for that."

Lilac sighed and shook her head. "No. All I want is someone to hold. They always wanted something more than that. That's actually the only thing that bothers me about the men in this place. All they can think about is mating, it seems."

"I knew I wasn't the only one who thought that," Krystal replied. "Anyway, I think sharing a room with you will help me hate this place a little less. At least there's someone around here that I can relate to now."

"It is a little different than Cerinia," said Lilac, understating what she knew to be a colossal difference in cultures and customs. "If you're able to take me in, I assume that you're not seeing anybody right now, right?"

Krystal sighed. "Kind of. I'm friends with a fox named Fox. We used to be closer, but I don't think he's interested in me anymore. He visited me yesterday, but it definitely didn't make things any better."

A sudden, fearful thought entered her mind, causing her to consider that possibility that Fox could potentially take a liking to Lilac and abandon her if the chance presented itself. She knew that Fox had an affinity for blue-furred Cerinian vixens, and encountering one without a tragic, murderous past would likely come across to him as being substantially more desirable than her. Shielding her thoughts from Lilac, she mused, _"No…Fox is better than that. He wouldn't just abandon me after all he's done to help me."_

"Is something wrong? What's on your mind, Krystal?" Lilac asked, looking at her childhood friend with a pair of concerned, orange eyes.

"It's nothing. Really – there's nothing be worried about," Krystal replied, shaking her head.

With the evening slowly fading into night, the two vixens abandoned the coffee shop and trudged back to Krystal's apartment. Although Krystal felt that she had concealed her memories and worries from her friend, Lilac thought differently. In her mind, she knew that Krystal was suppressing something. She could not figure out what it was, and she dared not ask her with her living situation hanging in the balance; but she had the feeling that Krystal Taero was holding back information that had the potential to tear her world apart.

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

In spite of Fox being stuck in the Gaia Corporation's Skallisian hospital, Peppy, Slippy, and Falco felt thrilled to finally return to the safety of the _Great Fox_. After launching from the District 7 spaceport, Peppy positioned the ship in a geosynchronous orbit with the planet between an ancient, derelict satellite and the hull of a ruined battleship. Starborne trash surrounded the planet on almost every side, with pieces of rubbish creating a thin, undefined ring around the planet near its equator. All three pilots knew that they would be forced to remain in orbit until Fox was cleared to leave the hospital, but being trapped in orbit on a well-furnished warship was infinitely better than being trapped on the black planet below.

With their Arwings secured inside the hangar and the ship's engines shut off, the team – minus Fox – made their way back to their respective crew quarters with the exception of Peppy, who walked to the ship's bridge where he intended to report Fox's findings to General Pepper. While Falco returned to his newly-refurnished room that would not be organized for much longer, Slippy shuffled into the ship's recreation room, which contained a ping pong table, a black couch, a video game system connected to an enormous flatscreen television, and the most eye-searing lime green wall paint in existence.

Seating himself on the left side of the couch, Slippy unclipped his wrist communicator from its mount and cycled through his contacts until he reached the one labeled '(Dad) Beltino Toad.' He pressed the call button and waited three seconds for the call to connect before his father's familiar, eccentric voice crept out of the small device's speakers. "Hello? This is Beltino."

"Hey Dad, this is Slippy. Sorry I missed your call earlier. You caught me at a bad time."

"I apologize for that, although I completely understand why you didn't pick up," Beltino replied. "Before I say anything else, is Fox anywhere nearby? He might want to hear about what I have to tell you."

Slippy groaned. "Um…that's why I missed your call. He's in the hospital right now. Someone detonated a bomb in Asgard Industries, and he got caught in it."

"My goodness – I hope he's alright."

"He'll live," said Slippy. "Although I'm getting a bit worried about him. He's been taking a lot of hits lately."

"In that case, maybe he isn't the best choice for what I and General Pepper have in mind."

"Why is that? And why are you working with General Pepper? You're not even in the same field of work."

"In this case I am," Beltino explained. "It deals with the information we've managed to retrieve from the Demiurge's body that was found in the bridge of the Cerinian flagship after it was brought back to Corneria. Based on what I and my researchers have been able to dig up, the metallic compounds in the Demiurge's body can only be found on one planet that we know of."

Slippy objected. "That's interesting, but how does that lead you to anything useful?"

"Because the number of scientists who are capable of completing a procedure that the Demiurge would have undergone is smaller than the number of fingers on my left hand. The intricacies that went into constructing his cybernetic body are far too complex for even my own mind to understand. Not only that, but I have been able to confirm that one such scientist is based on the same planet that the materials in the Demiurge's body originated from. Since the materials do not have any particular advantage over metals found on Corneria or other planets, it is my belief that they were simply chosen due to convenience and availability."

"It makes sense now. Come to think of it, Fox had a friend during his last job who was reconstructed by someone," Slippy replied.

Beltino's voice took on an emphatic property. "That might have been him. Do you know what he looked like?"

"Sorry Dad, but no. I don't even think Fox knows that. Who are you looking for, anyway?"

"Put your phone on its speaker projector mode," Beltino requested.

Following his father's instructions, Slippy engaged the aforementioned communication mode. Seconds later, two holographic images of two different individuals materialized in the air above his communicator. On the left, an image of a highly unattractive, short, bespectacled mole wearing a poorly-fitted suit hovered in front of his eyes. Slippy noted that the color of the hologram did not seem as vivid as usual, leading him to believe that the rendering had been based off an old photograph. The image on the right belonged to a hulking creature with a lupine build and gray fur. Like the mole, he wore spectacles, although his possessed a modern rectangular shape as opposed to the mole's antiquated circular frames. A long, white lab coat reached to his knees; and despite its ability to disguise the form of its wearer, it failed to hide the giant's prodigious physique, which looked like it could have exceeded seven feet in height.

"What is that…thing? Why are you showing me both of these at the same time?" asked Slippy.

"This might be the man we're looking for – both of them. I know it sounds ludicrous, but just hear me out."

Slippy scratched his head. "Okay…"

"This is the strangest part of it all," Beltino began. "Both of these people have the exact same name. Normally that wouldn't be too strange, but these two aren't named Steve Jones, if you get what I mean. Both of their names are Voltimure Reige. Now, I did a popularity search of the last two hundred years for that name, and it's so rare that them having the same name means that the huge wolf-person either thinks he's the mole's spiritual successor, so to speak, or that they are somehow the same person."

"Well, what did the mole do, then?"

Beltino paused and collected himself, then answered, "Yes, indeed – well, the mole was the mastermind behind many of the artificial intelligence units that are used throughout the Lylat System today. It could be said that your robot on the _Great Fox _is his work. Not only that, but he created his first prototypes over a hundred years ago, back when Corneria's space program was still a fledgling operation. He was ahead of his time, that's for sure. I knew Andross before he was exiled to Venom, and I'm not the only one who'll tell you that he idolized Dr. Reige, even though Andross was only in elementary school when Reige disappeared."

"Disappeared? Why?"

"There was…" Beltino paused. "There was an incident involving an extremely advanced A.I. unit that Reige intended to end his career with. Unlike the other A.I.'s which respond to mass numbers of pre-programmed default settings and logical arguments, Reige intended for this one to be able to both think and feel for itself. His colleagues thought it was a fatal idea, and it turned out that they were right. The A.I. went rampant and nearly destroyed the bulk of Central Corneria's technological infrastructure. Less than a week after the incident, Reige vanished, taking all of his files, notes, and projects with him. I guess he got what he wanted. His last project _did_ end his career, after all."

"So this guy was the Andross before Andross, basically," Slippy suggested.

"Yes, but at least Reige had the sense to pack up and leave after his catastrophic experiment. Andross just couldn't leave well enough alone."

"Well, yeah. So, what makes you think that they could be the same person? If he was an expert on artificial intelligence, couldn't this huge wolf just be an A.I. that thinks it's him?"

"It could be anything, son," Beltino replied. "However, the only thing that matters is that we find out if he had anything to do with the Demiurge's reconstruction. If he doesn't, Pepper and I would like to know if he has any ideas about the person who did. Since Fox has experience with the Demiurge, I thought it would be best if he and you traveled to the planet Zharon to look for him."

"Zharon? I haven't heard of that one."

"It's the planet closest to Ichtos – the central power in the Faulian System that you're in right now. It's largely a jungle planet considered by many to be the Cerinia that you can actually visit, since…well…Cerinia doesn't exist anymore. Don't say anything about that, though. The government is trying to keep that information hidden for as long as possible."

"I figured they would. It wouldn't do anyone any good to know about it," Slippy replied. "Still, you know it's going to come out eventually."

"Yes – we all know it's inevitable, but it'll be less shocking if enough time passes before people find out. Anyway, there is one…er…major issue with what General Pepper and I have proposed for you and Fox to do."

"And that would be…?"

Beltino cleared his throat and elaborated, "The planet is being overrun by an insectoid species known as the Aparoids. I assume you've heard of them, correct?"

"Fox's friend had some problems with them," Slippy replied.

"Then it looks like I won't need to explain anything about them to you. The problem is that for some reason, their normally placid species has centralized and is creating bizarre, dangerous mutations that are threatening the future of the planet. In fact, it's so bad that the planet's governments have come together and signed an emergency evacuation order. That planet's civilization is about to be wiped off the map, and all our evidence shows that Dr. Reige is still on the planet for some reason. General Pepper doesn't have the time to do the politics that would allow him to send soldiers to the planet to extract Reige simply because there's almost no time left. Since you're so close to the planet, you may be the only option left. If we lose him, we may lose key information about the Demiurge."

"Dad, I think you're complicating things too much. Can't we just call him and ask him about these things?"

Uneasily, Beltino answered, "I'm afraid not. This man is a recluse. The only information about his whereabouts that we've been able to pull up has come from people who've seen him recently. It matches up with the personality of the Voltimure Reige who worked on Corneria. He was almost impossible to talk to unless you could find him and were willing to meet with him in person. I'm sorry, Slippy, but you're going to have to find a way to get an audience with him."

Slippy frowned. "I'd do it, but if Fox needs to go with me, then I really need to wait until he's ready to leave the hospital. If this guy is as touchy as I think he'll be, then I definitely don't want to bring Falco along. I don't want to go alone, though."

"You may have to. But, if Fox is going to be ready in two days or less, by all means bring him with you. Oh – and one more thing."

Slippy narrowed his eyes. "You're really pushing it this time, Dad."

"It's important, I swear. General Pepper wanted me to warn you that the space surrounding Zharon is where a dangerous mercenary group named Specter is believed to keep their base. Chances are that if you go, they will be watching you. Please, just avoid making them mad, and they'll probably leave you alone."

"Good to know," Slippy muttered.

"If you have any questions, you can call me later. I've got to get back to work now, so I'll talk to you some other time."

"Goodbye, Dad," Slippy replied, closing the call and staring at the two holographic figures that still hovered above his communicator.

"_It just keeps getting weirder. I'm not sure I like where this is going."_

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):_

_Anyone who read the Iridium Chronicle should probably know what to expect next, although there will be some significant changes compared to that story. If anyone was wondering what role Lilac will play in this story, I don't really have an answer for you, but I can tell you that the prospect of her sharing a room with Krystal is already causing Krystal's grief to redline._

_Well, by this point, some of the plot points are going to be downright unintelligible if you haven't read _The Oasis. _I'm not going to dissuade you from continuing (I want views, after all), but unless you're willing to keep reading without knowing anything about some of these characters and locations, you're going to want to have prior knowledge of _The Oasis. _This is a sequel, after all._


	5. A Spectral Presence

**⑤ A Spectral Presence ⑤**

_Two days later…_

With a noticeably awkward motion, Fox climbed the _Great Fox's _loading ramp at the Skallis District 7 spaceport, assisted by Slippy. His prosthetic legs seemed to be in working order, but both he and the doctors responsible for attaching them knew that it would be some time before he would be able to walk normally again. For the time being, he hobbled into his mothership's main hangar before leaning against one of the stark, metallic supports on the right side of the cavernous space.

Giving his leader a concerned glance, Slippy implored him, "Fox, you really shouldn't come with me to Zharon. I know the doctors said that you would be fine if you left the hospital today, but that was only under the condition that you avoided any kind of high stress movements for at least two weeks."

"You said you didn't want to go alone," Fox retorted. "Bringing Falco would be a terrible idea, and Peppy's too old for this kind of thing. Unless you're open to Falco screwing everything up, I'm your best bet. If we find Dr. Reige quickly enough, we probably won't have to worry about me hurting myself."

Slippy shook his head. "The planet's being overrun by Aparoids. There's a good chance that we'll have to do some shooting to get through the mission alive."

"I don't think your dad would willfully put you in that much danger, Slippy. That doesn't make it safe, but I don't think there's as much to worry about as you think there is."

"You might be right," the amphibian muttered. "A…Alright, you can come with me, but you've got to go easy on those legs. If you mess them up, it's going to be even longer before you can walk normally again."

"Don't worry about me, Slippy. I'll be fine. I always find a way to make it through."

Slippy considered making a response, but after deciding that it would have been unwise to speak up, he bit his tongue and walked with Fox to the ship's bridge, where Peppy sat in his usual captain's chair. As Fox expected, Falco was nowhere to be seen. The fact did not matter much to him, seeing as he had no desire to make small talk with the bird after leaving the hospital with two awkward-feeling prosthetic legs. While he and Slippy descended the stairs to the pilot's area, Peppy began preparing the ship to leave Skallis once again.

While pressing various buttons and throwing switches that Fox had no concept of, the old hare said, "Slippy, we'll reach Zharon in about two hours if everything goes well. I've talked with the head of security around the city that Dr. Reige is believed to be holed up in, and he warned me that the situation with the Aparoids is becoming more critical than they thought it would be by this time. If you're going to go alone, you really might want to sit this one out."

"Um…well, I'm not going alone. Fox is going with me," Slippy explained.

After fully preparing the ship to take off, Peppy spun his seat around and gave Fox a foul expression. "You should not be doing this, Fox. You almost died three days ago, and now you're going to get right back into it with two robotic legs that you aren't even comfortable with yet? I'm starting to worry about you."

Fox waved him off. "Don't. I'll be fine. My legs are just a minor inconvenience, that's all."

Peppy's face assumed a fierce scowl. "I don't want to sound threatening, but you're going to get yourself killed within the year if you keep acting like this."

"Peppy, we're mercenaries. If we're not going to take any risks, we should retire. I'd rather be dead than be a coward."

"Being a coward is one thing – being a fool is another," Peppy shot back. "Listen, Fox – you're the leader here, so I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I will tell you that I do not approve of your decision to go to Zharon with Slippy. The Demiurge is dead, and learning more about who or what was responsible for his reconstruction isn't valuable enough to risk your lives over."

"I disagree," said Fox. "There could still be a threat out there that's linked to him. If there is, it would be better to know about it now rather than later, when it's too late to do anything about it."

"Suit yourself, then," Peppy conceded, returning to the _Great Fox's_ controls and pressing a button which caused a quick beep to fill the cockpit. Both Slippy and Fox recognized it as their cue to fasten their seatbelts and quickly moved into the nearest available chairs in the front of the ship's bridge. After checking to make sure that his comrades had secured themselves, Peppy lifted the _Great Fox_ off the ground and departed from the Skallis spaceport en route to Zharon.

Two hours and thirty minutes of uneventful space travel passed between Skallis and Zharon, with most of Fox and Slippy's time being spent discussing their plan for their upcoming search for Dr. Voltimure Reige. Both pilots reviewed documents and news updates from the planet, which confirmed that the Aparoids were becoming a significantly greater problem than either of them expected. The updates suggested that as much as 75% of the planet's surface had been seized by the marauding insects, and only the three largest metropolitan areas on the main continent still held out scraps of resistance. After two hours of poring over every scrap of information available to them, Fox and Slippy put away their devices, not wanting to see any more reminders of the danger that awaited them. Although both of them attempted to remain optimistic, neither felt particularly upbeat about their objective.

After what seemed like days, Peppy disengaged the _Great Fox's_ lightdrive and slowed the ship to its normal cruising speed. Through the ship's front windows, the large, jungle-covered planet loomed in the foreground. Even from the distance, however, something about it seemed 'off'. Tinges of the color purple dotted the landscape, growing larger as the _Great Fox _neared Zharon.

"Slippy, it's just as bad as the news reports said," Fox deadpanned. "How much time do you think we'll have?"

"I wouldn't stay down there for more than two hours," Slippy replied. "I want to get to the bottom of this, but it's not worth dying over."

"Let's get moving then," Fox ordered before turning to Peppy, who still occupied the pilot's seat. "Peppy, set the ship in orbit above the largest city on the planet, and be ready to let us back into the hangar when we're finished."

"Sure thing, Fox. Before you launch the Arwings, though, I need to warn you about something that's been showing up on the radar. It's very faint and it's only happened three times since we pulled out of FTL travel, but I've been seeing a few small blips in our area. I thought they were meteoroids at first, but they've been moving around too quickly for that. I think it may be a stealth unit."

Slippy gave Fox an uneasy glance. "My dad told me that there was a mercenary unit in this area. It could be them."

"Are they hostile? What do they do?" Fox asked in response.

"I don't know. They're called Specter. My dad said they would probably leave us alone as long as we didn't make them angry."

"Let's not do that, then. The fact that they haven't attacked us yet tells me that they're probably just checking us out – if they even exist to begin with." Turning to Peppy, Fox added, "Make sure Falco's ready to launch in case this gets ugly."

"Sure thing, Fox. Be careful out there," Peppy replied.

"Will do."

After the long walk back to the hangar, Fox and Slippy climbed aboard their Arwings and prepared themselves for the launch. The corner of the aparoided planet's surface provided a scenic backdrop for them as the two pilots engaged their engines and raced down the ceiling-mounted launch rails before barreling into the depths of space and performing two quick aileron rolls. With the planet's surface growing closer, Fox spoke into his fighter's comm line. "Do you see anything out there? Is your radar blank?"

"Yeah – I've got nothing," Slippy replied. "The _Great Fox_ has a better radar system than the Arwings, though. If there's something out here, Peppy would be the first to know in this case."

"Alright, then. We'll wait for him to panic if there's a threat."

"Copy that. I think we should be fine, though. We'll be arriving at the city spaceport in about three minutes. The place is called Venzenon, just so you know. Before the mass evacuation order, it had more than fifteen million people living in it."

Fox cringed. "That makes this mission impossible. There's no way we'll be able to find just one person in a city of that size."

"Well, yeah," Slippy admitted. "Our only real chance is finding someone who knows where he is, but if this guy is as strange as my father's research suggests, it might be easier than you think."

"Maybe, but we're still pulling out after two hours."

"I'm with you on that, Fox. This planet looks like it's already a lost cause," Slippy observed.

Zharon's sheer size became even more apparent to Fox and Slippy as they began their descent through the upper atmosphere. After thirty seconds of extreme turbulence, the mesospheric flames began to dissipate, revealing throngs of heavy rainclouds tinged with a disturbing purple hue. Massive jungles covered the planet's surface below, with numerous superhighways bridging the gaps between the small cluster of cities that made up the planet's equatorial region. From the skies above the forest, Fox and Slippy took note of the disturbing lack of traffic on the highways, which stood silently amidst the towering trees that provided a stark contrast with the heavy urbanization of the surrounding cities. Very few vehicles occupied the roads, and those that did sat motionless, having long since been abandoned during the panic-induced mass evacuation.

The two pilots counted five cities in their immediate line of sight, with the sprawling central metropolis of Venzenon occupying the majority of the area, which ended abruptly at the treeline much like Tivuri had on Cerinia. White paint covered the majority of the buildings, and the structures themselves espoused designs that resembled a combination of adobe desert architecture and upscale urban constructions. The city itself appeared to have been built around a small mountain that marked its central point.

"I'm seeing the spaceport on the west side of the city," said Slippy. "Man – it's a ghost town down there. It looks like the only people left are part of the security force."

"Well, if they've managed to evacuate everyone else from this place, they might be able to tell us where Dr. Reige is. If they don't know that, we might as well just head back to the _Great Fox, _because there's no way we'll be able to find him on our own."

"Agreed," Slippy replied.

As the duo approached the sprawling expanse of the spaceport, a ragged voice came through both Fox and Slippy's speakers. From the tone of his voice, the radio controller sounded like he had been shortchanged on sleep for upwards of a week. "This is Venzenon City spaceport control. What are you doing here? You know there's a planetwide evacuation order in place, right?"

"We're with Star Fox, looking for someone called Voltimure Reige," Slippy answered. "Didn't you talk to Peppy Hare about this earlier?"

With a groan, the air traffic controller replied, "I barely even remember talking to him, but yes – I think I did hear something about looking for that nutcase. Sorry, I should have recognized you two earlier. You're cleared to land anywhere where there's an open space, but you really shouldn't stay here long. In fact, the security forces are going to pull out in three hours. You definitely don't want to be here after that."

Fox spoke up. "Got it. Do you know where Dr. Reige is? If you don't, do you know someone who does?"

"Listen – I can tell you where he is, but if you're looking to chat with him, you might as well forget about it. He's holed himself up in his building and locked everything down. The power to the city's been cut for over a week now, but that nut has an industrial generator powering the place, not to mention the security measures."

"Security measures?"

"Long story short, we lost two of our guys when we tried to get him to come out. If you try to force your way in, you're asking for it," the radio controller explained. "Still, if you don't value your lives, I can point you in the right direction after you land."

Fox looked out the side of his fighter canopy and looked at Slippy as he flew alongside him. "Are you still sure about this, Slip?"

"Why the heck would I be? I wasn't sure about this to begin with!"

Fox shook his head. "General Pepper had better be ready to cough up the money when we get back after this."

"Well, technically, my dad was the one who wanted us to check this place out," Slippy corrected.

"He's working with General Pepper and he asked you to look into this for him. It's the same thing. Pepper's the one with the paycheck here, and he'd better to ready to fork it over after all the crap we've had to deal with already."

"In his defense, you know we didn't need to take that last job or this one, either," Slippy opined.

Fox made no response, choosing instead to let out a frustrated grunt and divert his attention to the large concrete landing area on the west side of Venzenon. From his viewpoint, the spaceport appeared to be nearly deserted. Only a few small vehicles darted about the concrete landing area, comparable in size to some small cities. No airplanes or space vehicles cluttered the air above the city, and the overall atmosphere of the mostly abandoned metropolis communicated an aura of absolute despair and hopelessness.

"_Maybe we should bump our search time down to ninety minutes. This place is doomed,"_ Fox thought.

With the landing area drawing near, Fox and Slippy dropped altitude and slowed their Arwings to landing speeds before touching down on the bright gray concrete landing surface as close to the main control tower as possible. As both pilots powered down their Arwings, the radio controller's voice filled their cockpits. "Give me a minute, and I'll be outside."

"Copy that," Fox replied, unclipping his flight harness and opening his canopy. A quick hiss resonated through the cockpit as the humid jungle air began to fill his lungs. The scent of the air seemed fresh enough – surprising for a metropolis that had once housed fifteen million anthropomorphs. However, an odd chemical smell best described as an odd mixture of rubber gloves and overpowered lettuce permeated the air. Fox wondered if the smell had anything to do with the Aparoids, although more important things than the scent of the air demanded his attention.

While he and Slippy climbed out of their Arwings and dropped to the concrete below, a towering mastiff wearing a dark gray set of fatigues shuffled out of the control tower's side service entry door. His hunched shoulders and weary eyes suggested an extreme lack of sleep and an insatiable desire to flee the planet. Locking eyes with Fox and Slippy, he introduced himself and said, "I take it you're the two people looking for Dr. Reige."

Fox and Slippy nodded, prompting the canine to continue. "The old coot is locked up in his house, if you can call it that. He's violated so many city protocols over the years that it would take him decades to pay them all off if he wasn't so filthy rich. The place you're looking for is about an hour's drive from here, in the upper city located on the side of the mountain that this city is built around. If I'm honest, you can't possibly miss the place. It's not overly large, but you can tell it's his by the crumbling buildings surrounding it. Evidently, everyone who lived near him decided at one point or another to get the hell away from him. It'll make sense when you see the place. It used to be a high-end part of town, too. What a shame."

Fox and Slippy looked at each other for over five seconds before Slippy returned his attention to the mastiff and asked, "What's the fastest way to get there?"

The radio controller replied, "Just take one of the cars that were abandoned during the evacuation. There are probably thousands of them. They're all over the place. Heck, there are about thirty of them on the other side of the control tower. I and the other guards have been joyriding in them for the last week to keep ourselves from going crazy. If you want the address, you can use an e-map from the visitors' center. Just give me a few minutes to find one and program in your destination while you pick out your car. Don't worry about hotwiring them – all the keys are in the ignitions. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get you your map."

With that, the radio controller turned around and walked back into the oversized control tower. After the service entry door clicked shut behind him, Fox looked at Slippy out of the corner of his eye and said, "They were so desperate to get off the planet that they left their keys in the ignition? This is sounding worse all the time."

"Hey – at least we know where to go and have a way to get there quickly."

"Fair point. Let's see what kind of cars they've got around here."

As the two pilots walked along the front side of the control tower, which occupied a fair amount of space on the spaceport's landing surface, Fox noted the sheer lack of noise in the surrounding area. The sound of an aircraft trolley somewhere behind him reached his ears, but apart from the unpleasant grumbling created by its antiquated engine, the only sound Fox heard belonged to the odd-scented wind as it breezed through the towering jungle trees that flanked the spaceport and the edge of the city.

"_This is terrifying. I've never seen anything like this before. I've seen ghost towns, but never a ghost megacity. All I can say is that I'm glad that this isn't Corneria City."_

Noticing Fox's pensive expression, Slippy cocked his head and asked, "Is something wrong, Fox?"

Fox shook his head and replied, "No – I was just thinking, that's all."

Soon enough, the parking lot behind the control tower came into view, and with it, the thirty parked cars the mastiff radio controller had mentioned. Despite the danger of the situation, Fox's eyes darted from vehicle to vehicle, examining each car in hopes of discerning the most exciting one to drive. The majority of the vehicles registered as basic saloon cars and utility vehicles with two diminutive hovercars thrown into the mix, although he noticed four performance vehicles scattered throughout the motley vehicular arrangement. Almost as if he knew Fox's thoughts, Slippy bumped him and commented, "I hate to be a downer here, but the fastest car on the lot is the one we're definitely not going to want to take."

Fox returned a puzzled expression. "Why not?"

"Remember how the radio controller said that he and the other guards had been joyriding in the cars to pass the time? Well, which ones were they probably using? I'm guessing it wasn't that minivan over there."

"What are you getting at?" asked Fox.

"What I'm getting at is that the cars you're probably interested in might be about to run out of fuel. I haven't seen any reserve tanks anywhere around here; and I'm guessing that most of the valuable fuel stores were evacuated with the population. So, what that means is that if we run out of gas, we're going to have to walk. That minivan's not looking so bad now, is it?"

Fox's countenance dropped. "I am _not_ driving that thing. Why don't we take one of the hovercars?"

"Hovercars burn through so much fuel that they need to be filled up twice as often as normal cars, not to mention that their reliability is sketchy at best and that they are incredibly hard to stop. It's still new technology, you know. These aren't G-Zero racers."

"I guess that answers that," Fox grumbled. "But there's no way I'm going to be driving that minivan."

"Fine – I'll do it then," Slippy replied. "Let me check the fuel level first. Whatever has enough fuel to get us to the doctor's place and back is what we'll use."

While Slippy darted towards the minivan and opened the drivers' side door, Fox paced along the haphazard line of cars representing numerous eras and areas of origin. He recognized two of the sportier models as Zonessian models built before the Lylat War, partially because he had taken interest in similar vehicles shortly before Andross's first attack on Corneria. Even though he knew that his situation entailed far more important things than being able to drive an interesting car, he hoped that the minivan would be running on fumes. While he shuffled around the parking lot, the mastiff radio controller emerged from a door on the other side of the control tower with a thick, sturdy tablet in his hands. A mere second later, Slippy called out, "It's got a full tank. We're taking it."

Fox cringed; and to avoid having to turn to face Slippy and show his displeasure, he approached the radio controller and accepted the tablet from him. "Thanks for your help. This would have been impossible without you."

In response, the radio controller allowed a tired smile to appear on his face as he replied, "It was better than doing nothing, that's for sure. You're going to want to get back here ASAP, though. As I said earlier, we're pulling out in under three hours now. One thing I was wondering though was 'what are you going to do with the doctor if you can somehow get that madman to talk?' You're not going to be able to fit him in one of your fighters, you know."

Fox scratched the back of his head, inciting a brief, awkward pause. "We were just going to leave him here. If he doesn't want to leave, why should we make him?"

"Ah, that's what I figured," the canine replied. "Good luck with him, you two. You're going to need a lot of it."

Unsure of whether to thank him or not, Fox mumbled, "Yeah, thanks a lot."

With the map-equipped tablet tucked under his shoulder, Fox made his way through the small sea of vehicles until he reached the black minivan that Slippy – for whatever reason – was adamant about using. He noted that the vehicle looked almost new, with charcoal-colored, sporty rims and aggressive styling that tried – but still failed – to mask its designation as a van. As he skirted the rear of the utilitarian vehicle, he mused, _"I am never buying one of these things. I don't care if I've got four kids and my future wife is head over heels with the idea of getting a van. Getting into one of these things is like lining up to be neutered, so it figures that Slippy would be all over the idea of using one to look for the doctor. Wait – did I really just think that? Maybe Falco being back is already getting to me."_

Making sure to pause for as long as possible so that Slippy would notice, Fox grimaced and opened the van's front passenger door before sliding into the leather seat across from his cohort, who turned the key in the ignition and started the engine. Without waiting for Fox to close his door, Slippy punched the throttle and sped towards the spaceport parking lot exit, located nearly a quarter mile away and marked by a tall chain-link fence that – mercifully – had been left open. In the back of his mind, he wondered how consumer vehicles had ended up on the surface of the spacecraft landing area, but he handwaved it as a byproduct of the panicked evacuation effort and refocused his mind on the task at hand. The number '93' glowed yellow on the black van's digital speedometer as he raced through the opened fence gate.

Noticing that Fox had not made any comments after climbing into the van, Slippy glanced at his teammate and suppressed a laugh upon noticing the expression of genuine fear on his muzzle. "What? Is something wrong, Fox?" he chuckled.

After a moment, Fox's expression returned to normal. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just wasn't expecting you to drive so fast. Keep it up, though. We need to get to the doctor as soon as possible." Pulling his tourist tablet out from under his arm, he activated the device and selected the device's holographic layout option, which displayed their destination with a green arrow that bobbed up and down. At Slippy's current speed, the tablet projected their travel time as being slightly over thirty minutes – twice as quick as the radio controller had suggested. Still, after looking more closely at the route, Fox noticed that the last quarter of the trip required taking a winding route up the city's central mountain, which loomed in the distance through the van's windshield.

"I'm going to say it's going to be another forty-five minutes before we get there, Slippy," Fox announced.

Slippy nodded, not giving off any particular emotional response to Fox's prediction. Having little else to do apart from driving the van, he observed the environment around him. A dismal sight, he thought. Vehicles of all sorts sat motionless on almost every curb and street corner, even though the center of the roads remained clear. All the while, the palm trees that dotted the medians and corners swayed in the sultry wind. In his mind, he pictured a tumbleweed rolling across the road in front of him; and it seemed so real to him that he almost swerved to avoid it. To complete the picture of complete abandonment, every sign and streetlight refused to so much as flicker as a dark cloud tinged with purple rolled over the city. Less than a minute later, a steady, humid rain began to create droplets on the van's windshield. Slippy reached for the windshield wipers and leaned back in his seat before turning his attention towards Fox. "Why do you think Dr. Reige is still here? I haven't even seen one person outside the spaceport yet."

"If he's as crazy as the radio controller said he was, then I think any reason is possible with him. He might be in denial about it all. That's my best guess, anyway. Maybe he's one of those crazy survivalists who think they can find their way out of anything. There's no finding your way out of an Aparoid infestation, though. I saw what happened to Scarlet; and I don't even want to think about what would happen if something like that took place on a global scale."

"Um, you might want to think about it since we're watching it happen right now," Slippy objected. "I haven't seen any Aparoids yet, but I don't have a good feeling that it's going to stay that way."

"I hope you're wrong," Fox replied.

"Me too. Hey – how are your legs holding up so far?"

Fox looked down at his prosthetics, covered in synthetic fur and masked by the black combat trousers that he wore overtop of them. "Walking is still awkward, but I'm getting used to it. It's still going to be awhile before it'll feel normal, though. My eye, on the other hand…"

"Just try not to get yourself critically injured again, will ya, Fox?"

The vulpine responded with a faint grin. "I'll try not to."

Several miles of driving brought Fox and Slippy's van to the first route deviation on their map – a right loop onto one of the superhighways that they had seen from the air on the way into the city. With a virtually empty expanse of a five-lane expressway ahead of him, Slippy pushed the van's throttle farther down, although the continual presence of rain prevented him from pressing past one hundred miles per hour for safety reasons.

"Fifteen minutes, Slip," said Fox. "You're going to take the fourth exit from here in about five miles."

Slippy glanced at Fox and then looked out the passenger side window towards the city's wide central mountain, covered with dense forests that masked the buildings nestled in the jungle area. "Got it. Our destination's on that mountain over there, isn't it?"

"It is," Fox replied. "The one thing that worries me about the route is that there's only one road that goes up to Dr. Reige's building. If something happens or if the Aparoids decide to show up, we might be in trouble."

"One step at a time, Fox. We'll keep an eye on the surroundings, and if things start to head south, we'll get out of here. Still, we won't have much time to move if the Aparoids get into the city."

Fox nodded in agreement. "Just make sure you've got the Arwing autopilot program ready to go so we can escape if things get tight."

"I'll work on it after we get out of the van," Slippy replied before pointing to an exit sign marked 'Mountain Blvd., Villiard Rd.' and asking, "Is this the one?"

Briefly glancing at his map, Fox answered, "Yes. After this, take the next right and follow the road until it ends. That's our destination."

After leaving the superhighway and returning to the city streets below, Slippy followed Fox's route and turned onto the winding mountain road that marked the final stage of their trip. The elevation that had started at sea level quickly rose to over a thousand feet, causing Fox's ears to flare up in pain. As the road climbed, the rain intensified, bringing a faint, foggy mist with it.

Being an amphibian, Slippy did not mind moisture in the least. However, he knew that Fox detested heavy rains; and without looking, he could tell that an angry scowl rested on his face. The narrow mountain road twisted around several enormous jungle trees, regressing into a series of tight switchbacks as the altitude increased even more than it had before. Holding his right ear with his free hand, Fox looked at the map and announced, "We're almost there. Be ready for anything."

At the top of the switchbacks, the road straightened out and led into what looked like a once-glamorous upscale neighborhood. The large, stone-covered buildings gave off a somber air, almost as if to suggest that they had been left unoccupied long before the evacuation order had been given. Luxurious houses lay silent, with weeds, mosses and vines climbing over their walls, pillars, outdoor lighting fixtures, and stone exteriors. The asphalt road turned to cobblestone as Slippy eased the van into the town square, marked by an empty, derelict fountain with the design of a vixen in a robe pouring water that had not flowed for months. The street narrowed after the fountain, forcing Slippy to park the van.

Turning the engine off, he looked at Fox and said, "The tower controller said this neighborhood was abandoned because the people who lived here couldn't stand to be around the doctor. Why, though? Only the mother of all catastrophes could make someone leave houses like these!"

"I think you may have answered your own question. I've had crazy neighbors before, and my dad was keen on getting out of those places at the first possible chance. The doctor could be a walking catastrophe, for all we know."

"Well, we're about to find out," Slippy replied, opening his door and pulling his compact blaster out of its belt holster. "Come on, Fox. Don't tell me you're afraid to get wet."

"I'm not afraid of getting wet – I just hate it," Fox growled, opening his door and stepping out into the humid, foggy, drenched mountainside town. Knowing that his goal lay nearby, he drew his blaster and began walking down the narrow street that the van would not fit into. Decorative strands, banners, and flags bridged the gaps between the lavish, multi-stories houses that now only housed dust and insects; and the trimmings looked just as abandoned as the rest of the small mountainside town. The road came to an end in the side of a small, fern-covered hill where another cobblestone walkway led to the right.

Turning the corner, Fox and Slippy laid eyes on the largest building they had seen yet. The structure had 'only' two levels, but the sheer size of its perimeter measurements caused both pilots to wonder how it had been constructed in such an intimate setting. Like the other houses, elegant stone made up the majority of its fascia. The building's steep, angular roof attracted Fox's attention in particular. He pictured a roofer attempting to walk on it, but all he could imagine was the same roofer falling off the roof and crashing down on the cobblestone street below. No plants grew around the building, and the same variety of mosses, vines, and weeds that infested the rest of the town crept along its edges and walls. Providing a bizarre contrast with the rest of the town, a square-shaped structure made of reinforced concrete stood behind the house.

"_It almost looks like a hangar of some sort," _Fox thought.

Marking the front of the main house was a set of doors that, when shut, created the illusion of an arch. They appeared to be made of wood, but somehow, both Fox and Slippy had the feeling that a reinforced wood substitute had been used instead. For several seconds, both pilots stood a good ways from the house, not feeling confident about moving any closer.

Turning towards Fox, Slippy asked, "What do you think we should do? I'd hate to overcomplicate things if knocking on the door would be enough."

"You know he's not going to answer the door," Fox retorted.

Slippy's eyes narrowed. "Hey – I'm just trying to use up all of our options, because I don't see another way in. You didn't happen to bring any breaching charges, did you?"

"I did," Fox answered. "I figured we would need them."

Unsure of what to think about Fox's decision, Slippy began walking towards the front door. "I might as well give him a chance to answer before things get ugly."

"Go ahead – suit yourself. It's not going to do anything." Fox replied.

Unfazed, Slippy ascended the three stone steps that led to the curved front doors. Several antique lighting fixtures flanked the door, but neither of them contained a light bulb or a filament. Above and to the right of the ornate, curved door handle, a green rectangular sign with white trim read 'GO AWAY' in all capital letters. Slippy then noticed the absence of a doorbell anywhere along the doorframe. He saw the piece of trim that looked like it had been a doorbell at one point, but had been ripped out quite some time ago. Several bare wires hung from the spot on the side of the door frame, cementing the point that the doctor did not want to be bothered in the least.

Slippy took a deep breath. Then, he clenched his fist and knocked on the door. The instant his knuckles touched the artificial, blastproof wood, an earsplitting klaxon alarm blared out of the tiny, trim-mounted speakers that he had not noticed until that moment. His feet left the ground unconsciously in response to the sound, and he knew that Fox would have laughed at him if the circumstances had not been so dire. As the alarm seared his eardrums, he remembered the control tower operator mentioning Dr. Reige's security measures.

"_Aw, crap."_

Out of the corner of his replacement eye, Fox watched as two small devices raced out from behind the large house and moved towards the source of the intrusion. They looked rather small and appeared to roll on wheels; but Fox did not give himself enough time to examine them before he turned towards the corner of the nearest building and promptly tripped as his uncoordinated prosthetic legs failed to cooperate with his panicked mind. His chest hit the ground while Slippy leaped down the steps leading to the front door and grabbed Fox's free left hand. While Fox struggled to regain his footing and stand up again, the sound of bullets filled the jungle air. Hot lead raced past Fox's head, nearly catching Slippy in the chest.

Panic manifested itself on Slippy's face, exacerbated by Fox's inability to move himself out of the way in anything resembling a speedy manner. "Come on, Fox!" he screamed, dragging the vulpine towards the corner of the nearby stone building. Fox dug in his legs and willed himself to run, but he stumbled every other step and struggled to stay on his feet. A second volley of bullets tore through the air, tearing into the edge of the building as Slippy dove behind the corner, letting go of Fox's hand in the process and causing him to fall on his face in a patch of overgrown grass. Ignoring the pain in his body and the uncooperative state of his legs, Fox rolled over, grabbed his blaster, and fought his way back into a crouched position behind the corner. He and Slippy's temporary haven amounted to a narrow alley that offered almost no cover in the event that Dr. Reige's security devices rounded the corner, leading him to believe that to avoid being gunned down, they would need to take the offensive against the marauding machines.

Fox glared at his teammate with his blaster pressed into his shoulder. "Slippy, did you see what we're up against?"

Slippy nodded. "Two heavily modified rolling security drones. The armor looks weak, but there's nothing weak about their machineguns."

"That doctor is paranoid," Fox muttered. "We're about to be killed for knocking on his front door!"

"I can hear them moving closer," Slippy exclaimed. "Hold on – let me try this."

Reaching for his belt, Slippy grabbed his one grenade and primed it for use. The yellow orb began to glow in the palm of his hand, increasing in intensity with every second. When the sphere threatened to blind him with its ever-increasing light, he hurled it out of the alleyway before Fox could protest his decision to use his only grenade when he could only guess the location of the attack drones.

The detonator soared through the rain-drenched air and rolled to a stop fifteen feet past the edge of the corner. With an explosion imminent, Slippy dove towards Fox's side of the narrow alleyway and pressed himself against the wall before the yellow grenade exploded, releasing a flurry of shrapnel and a volatile shockwave. The explosion rocked both his and Fox's ears, immediately deafening them to the klaxon alarm mounted on Dr. Reige's residence.

"_Wait a minute... the alarm actually did stop,"_ Slippy realized.

Fox came to a similar conclusion. At first, he thought that he had been subjected to temporary ear trauma by the grenade blast, but when he realized that he could still hear the driving rain falling on and around him, he looked over his shoulder at Slippy and asked, "Do you think that took care of them?"

"There's only one way to find out," Slippy muttered, arming his blaster and creeping toward the edge of the stone building's front corner. After taking a deep breath, he poked his head out and prepared to fire on the attack drones in the event that they had not been destroyed. To his surprise and relief, both machines bore the marks of the grenade blast. To his right, intermittent sparks flew up from the inside of the first tarnished machine; but the drone on the left no longer existed as one piece. Three chunks of robotic parts and sheet metal lay scattered about the pavement, suggesting that the grenade had detonated in close proximity to it.

With his rapid heartbeat slowing to its normal rate, Slippy motioned for Fox to leave the cover of the alleyway. Walking awkwardly, Fox lumbered into the open and looked at the destroyed machines on the ground near his feet.

"These aren't security drones," he stated, using a borderline mocking tone of voice. "These are the kind of robots that hobbyists build to fight each other with – except those don't normally have machineguns on them."

Slippy narrowed his eyes and replied, "You're right. That's unusual. The alarm's down, though. Personally, I think we should take a look around the building before we call it a lost cause and get back to the spaceport."

"We'd better make it quick. If that alarm goes off again, I'm going back to the van and leaving you here," Fox commented, although the inflection in his voice made it clear to Slippy that he did not truly intend to abandon him.

"No need to worry about that. I want to get out of here just as much as you do, but I just want to make sure we give it a fair chance before we have to tell General Pepper and my dad that we failed. If there's nothing we can do, we'll just leave it that way."

Without waiting for Fox to reply, he began scanning the perimeter of the large house, starting with the left side. Numerous windows adorned both the building's first and second story levels, but wooden shutters covered each and every one of them. No side doors stood out to either him or Fox as they walked through the rain that only seemed to crash down harder as time went on.

"_This building looks like it was designed to be impossible to get into apart from the front door. There's probably a back door too, but I bet it's locked down just as much as the front."_

While Slippy sighed and silently cursed his decision to travel to the Aparoid-infested planet, Fox stopped beside him and said, "There's really no way in unless we blow the front doors – and I would bet you anything that they're blastproof, considering how crazy this guy is."

Slippy hesitated. Then, he looked at Fox out of the corner of his eye and pointed to an area near the back corner of the house. "I think I see something. It's probably not going to work, but it's our best bet."

Following Slippy's finger, Fox noticed two trash cans positioned alongside the house directly underneath what looked like two waste chutes. "No – you can't seriously think…"

"I do," Slippy replied. "For them to work, they can't be left unlocked…unless there's a lock at the top of the chute. Even if there is, dealing with that will be nothing compared with trying to blast through the front doors."

"Climbing up a garbage chute? Are you serious?"

"We'll try the one above the recycle bin. That one should be cleaner," Slippy suggested.

Fox frowned and crossed his arms. "You know, no matter how we get in, it isn't going to change the fact that the doctor obviously doesn't want to talk to us."

"Then we'll make him talk," Slippy declared.

For a moment, Fox found himself almost speechless. "I haven't heard that one from you before, Slip. Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine, Fox. I just really don't want to have wasted all this time just to fail when we're this close."

"I hear you. Alright, let's try the recycle chute," Fox muttered.

In his mind, Fox wanted nothing more than for Slippy's idea to fail. With his fur drenched and his situation becoming more precarious with every passing minute, he looked towards the sky, fearing that the signs of incoming Aparoids would begin to manifest themselves. For the moment, only the rain and the purple-tinged clouds loomed overhead. Nonetheless, a haunting aura pervaded the air, and he felt as if someone or something had him in its sights.

Approaching the two trash cans, Slippy shoved them away before jumping to reach the trim around the edge of the trash chute. The wooden panel that covered the chute rotated inwards in response to his touch, but he found himself unable to pull himself up. Before he could ask for help, Fox grabbed him by the ankles and pushed him up until he managed to crawl into the recycle shaft. Unable to turn around in the space that barely accommodated his rotund figure, he turned his head and spoke to Fox. "Wait until I get to the top of this chute before you come after me. If the panel up there is locked, I'll have to break it."

Fox answered with a quick 'got it' and waited for his amphibious teammate to pull himself to the top of the recycle chute. With precious little room to move, Slippy's progress came slowly; and after a full minute passed without a word or a hint of communication, Fox stepped away from the outside of the chute and backed into the open courtyard in front of Dr. Reige's prodigious residence. To his right, on the same longitudinal line as the orientation of the front doors, a quick drop-off marked the edge of the mountainside town. A wooden rail ran along the edge of the small cliff, which dropped down fifty feet into an exceptionally thick section of forest marked by overgrown jungle trees that towered over the nearby town. Fox stood fifty feet from the railing, but his line of sight still permitted him to look over it to a small degree.

Suddenly, he noticed something standing in the open space between two looming trees a short distance from the edge of the cliff. His fur bristled and stood on end, and his jaw dropped in shock and terror. In the clearing, a single being stood, its baleful mechanical eyes glaring at him with a blue-tinged aura of abject hatred. Black metal composed the majority of its form, formed in the shape of a vulpine's body – or more specifically, that of a vixen. Numerous wires and mechanical components jutted out from the specter's armored frame, which exhibited a large puncture hole in its sternum area. Struggling to believe his eyes, Fox noticed that the telltale purple and blue hexagon markings consistent with Aparoidedation covered the vast majority of the mechanized fox's frame.

As he realized the identity of the apparition, he began to feel lightheaded. _"No! It can't be! I watched her die onboard the _Aesir_! This was never supposed to happen – how could that grenade not have killed her?"_

Unable to look into Aparoided Scarlet's hateful blue eyes any longer, Fox turned on his heels and sprinted back to the trash chute. A sense of desperation filled his voice as he pulled the exterior slab of wood open and shouted into the cramped shaft. "Slippy! How's the progress with the lock?"

"I'm just about finished with it," he replied. "Is there something wrong out there?"

"You might say that."

Slippy's voice changed to reflect his own growing fears of the predicted Aparoid influx. "Is it the Aparoids?"

"It's even worse than that, Slippy. We either need to get into this house now, or we need to hightail it back to the van before… No, it's too late for that already."

"Fox, what are you talking about? What's going on out there?"

Taking a deep breath in a futile attempt at calming himself, Fox replied, "Hurry up and finish breaking that lock – I'm coming up."

Slippy balked, but Fox refused to be stopped by him. Pulling himself into the chute, he crawled towards Slippy at the top of the fifteen foot shaft that sloped upwards at a thirty degree angle. He struggled to gain enough grip to pull himself up, but his gloves gave him just enough traction to twist his way to the top of the shaft. After his whole body entered the recycle chute, the hatch on the outside returned to its original position, shrouding the shaft in complete darkness until Slippy activated his flashlight and looked at Fox with his peripheral vision. "Fox, what was that all about?"

Breathlessly, Fox replied, "I saw Scarlet. Somehow, she failed to kill herself, and now the Aparoids have her."

Slippy swallowed. "Oh crap. Do you think that means that more Aparoids are going to be following her?"

"I wouldn't bet against it," Fox answered. "Are you finished with the lock?"

"Yeah. I had to cut it out with my knife, but this flap should open now. For all I know, this might be the only part of the whole house that has a security weakness."

"Don't say that just yet," Fox grunted. "All right – let's get in there and try to get that crazy bastard to talk. Make sure your gun is armed. We should probably expect to be attacked inside after what happened a few minutes ago."

Slippy nodded and reached for the inside of the trash chute panel and pulled it inwards. Without the lock to hold in place, it swung freely; although Slippy struggled to fight past it due to it trying to close on him as he forced his way out of the trash chute and into an area that he recognized as a kitchen. With a final push from Fox, he fell out of the chute onto the white kitchen floor with a loud thump that would have alerted anyone in the nearby vicinity. Fearing that this had happened, he stood up and shifted into a shooting stance. While Fox struggled with the trash chute door, Slippy observed the kitchen. The sea of white that composed the area seared his eyes after having spent the last few minutes in the darkness of the recycle shaft. Glancing at his feet, he winced as he noticed the brown bootprints that he had already laid down on the otherwise pristine floor that looked to be made out of a plastic composite of some sort. As he looked around the rest of the area, he noted that the walls sported the same design scheme.

"_The doctor's probably a germophobe, since I don't think I've ever seen a cleaner kitchen before."_

A minimal number of kitchen machines dotted the white countertops, including a white toaster and even a white frying pan that somehow managed to look like it had never been touched despite being on the stove's cooking surface. The extreme cleanliness of the room brought a feeling of guilt to him, knowing that he had already ruined its perfection with his filthy boots. He halfway contemplated removing his shoes, but before he could make another move, Fox flopped out of the recycle chute and fought his way to his feet. "If this guy hasn't shown up yet, I'm starting to wonder if he's even here. He could have heard us trying to get in from the second floor, easily."

Slippy shook his head. "I smell bacon, so I'm pretty sure that somebody's been around here recently. I'm surprised, though – with that alarm going off, I would have almost expected us to be gunned down the instant we got inside. Something's not right here. We probably shouldn't split up to look for the doctor."

"I'm with you on that," Fox whispered. "If he hasn't done anything yet, he's probably hiding in a closet or something, hoping that we'll go away and leave him to himself."

"Did you see the picture of him that my dad sent to me? He's huge! Somehow, I don't think someone like him would let us into his house without making sure we ended up dead. He already tried outside…"

"But why hasn't anything happened yet? It's silent in here. If he heard us, he'd have done something about it by now."

Slippy sighed. "Maybe he's in that building out back and didn't hear us."

"Slippy, that alarm could have probably been heard at the bottom of the mountain. There's no way that he couldn't have heard it."

Scratching his chin, Slippy replied, "This isn't adding up, but I'm pretty sure _someone _is here. Let's start with a sweep of the house. Keep an eye out for any more of the doctor's 'security measures.'"

"Got it," Fox whispered. "Start with the edges, then move towards the central rooms. If there's nothing on this floor, look for the stairs to the second level."

Making as little noise as possible, Fox and Slippy crept out of the kitchen into the next room, which contained no furnishings or accents. Stark white paint covered the entirety of its area, and the oddness of the room became even stranger when the two pilots exited the empty space and entered the main great room. A white couch and a white coffee table stood in the center of the room, while an equally white grand piano occupied the space in the back corner. The sound level inside the house still failed to rise above the noise created by Fox and Slippy's boots as they scanned the area before moving towards a heavy door with the word 'laboratory' engraved into its surface.

As he reached for the door's stationary bar handle, Fox expected to be unable to move it. To his surprise, however, the door swung outwards with a quick pull, revealing a narrow, stair-heavy passageway that traveled twenty feet downwards. Numerous white accent lights illuminated the corridor that possessed an unusual scent that Fox recognized as one belonging to medical compounds and fluids. When Slippy followed him into the hallway and closed the door behind him, the silence in the house became even more pronounced. A haunting feeling pervaded the air as Fox led the way down the stairs to the bottom of the underground level. At the bottom of the staircase, Fox noticed a hallway branching out to the right. A faint light emanated from it, and it seemed to coming from a source other than the wall-mounted sconces that illuminated the rest of the hallway.

Giving Slippy a quick glance, Fox rounded the corner with his weapon drawn. Ahead of him, a door similar to the one he had just opened blocked entrance to the one room in the underground area. Frosted glass trim surrounded the door; and Fox's pulse quickened when he noticed movement from inside the room. The frosted glass obscured his vision into the laboratory, but the sheer size of the blurry figure inside the room made it obvious that he and Slippy had found their target.

Stopping in his tracks, Fox turned to Slippy and said, "You should go in first. You're going to have to be the one doing the talking, anyway. Make sure you're ready to defend yourself if you need to, though."

"That's not a good way to make a first impression," Slippy commented. "We shouldn't make him feel any more uncomfortable than he already is. Breaking into his house and then pointing our guns at him isn't going to do us any favors if we want to get him to talk, you know."

"If the pictures of him are anything to go by, he could rip you in half with his bare hands. I think he may deserve to have guns pointed at him in a situation like this one," Fox returned.

"You make a good point," Slippy admitted. "Alright – don't aim at him unless he makes a move. Otherwise, just keep your blaster ready. I'll get the door."

Fox noticed Slippy's arms shaking as he reached for the lab's door handle and pulled it. The heavy door slowly rotated open, revealing the hulking lupine doctor standing with his back to his intruders. He stood in front of a white table, with his oversized claws tapping on the screen of an oversized tablet computer. From what Slippy could observe about him, he towered over both Fox and himself, standing over seven feet tall. An oversized wolf's tail jutted out from the back of his white lab coat, and his light gray fur struck Slippy as the only thing inside the house that was not covered in white. Oddly though, Dr. Reige's long, black claws looked different from those of a traditional lupine and more closely resembled reptilian talons. His overall appearance strongly suggested a lupine background, but various features of his anatomy seemed uncanny, especially his enormous figure that – despite holding a significant amount of muscle – still looked lanky due to his height.

Lost in his own thoughts, the doctor heard nothing until he pulled a small card out from the side of tablet and held it up just as Slippy crept into the room. At that moment, he saw something green out of the corner of his eye and dropped the card on the table before whirling around and letting out a panicked yelp in a voice that did not match up with what his physique suggested. "Gads! Who in blazes are you? What business have you breaking into my fortress of solitude and startling me, you insipid vermin?"

Upon feeling the brunt of the doctor's irate response, Slippy gulped and nervously replied, "We need to ask you some questions, sir."

Dr. Reige threw up his hands in exasperation and snapped, "Oh indeed! Everyone it seems wants nothing more than to pry me open for questions, and I'm nauseated by it! 'Where did you get your prodigious intellect from?' 'Why won't you answer my communications?' Why did you try to kill me for soliciting you by knocking on your front door?' 'Is it true that you're working on an AI program that almost destroyed an entire planet's civilization?' Questions like these – I won't tolerate any more of them! Now – _get out, _and don't you dare lecture me about the Aparoids! Do you think that I am so ignorant of the world outside that I don't know about those most diabolical specimens of which hell hath no fury?"

Slippy looked over his shoulder at Fox and shot him an incredulous gaze. Fox's expression suggested that he would have laughed if the doctor had not been genuinely furious. Not wanting to leave Zharon without accomplishing his goal, Slippy replied to the doctor and said, "A…Actually, I didn't want to ask you any of those questions. All we need to know is if you're familiar with someone named Neron Taero, also called 'The Demiurge.'" For a few panicked seconds, he sorted through the slew of menus on his wrist communicator before pulling up an image of the deceased Cerinian, which he showed to the doctor.

Bending over to view the picture on Slippy's wrist unit, Dr. Reige answered, "I know nothing about him. But pray tell, what did he do that would warrant you breaking into my house just to ask me if I recognized him? Why do you suspect me, of all people?"

Without hesitation, Slippy replied, "Because you're the only person in this part of the solar system who could have rebuilt him. Also, the metals in his frame are only found on this planet."

Dr. Reige's infuriated countenance evaporated, replaced by a concerned pensiveness. Scratching his muzzle and then adjusting his glasses, the doctor muttered, "Indeed, this is most singular. But I swear that I have never had anything to do with this 'Demiurge' person or whatever you call him."

"Then what about _her_?" Slippy asked, retrieving a photograph of Scarlet and holding his wrist gauntlet where the doctor could see it.

Dr. Reige cracked a faint smile. "Oh, her. Yes, she was my most recent patient. I do believe her reanimation was a substantial step forward for both myself and her – it could not have proceeded any more finely."

Frowning, Fox spoke up. "She was possessed by the Aparoids that you put inside of her. It got so bad that she tried to kill herself to keep them from taking her over."

Reige's eyes fell to the floor in displeasure, although he did not seem to show much emotion about Scarlet's fate. "Oh, is that so? What a bitter disappointment. Ah well, sometimes mistakes must be made for the sake of progress, and sometimes the sacrificial lamb must be slaughtered before advancement can occur."

Fox attempted to avoid showing his frustration, but in is mind, an inferno of anger raged. _"You son of a bitch! How can you say that with a straight face? It's like you don't even care that she was a person at one point!"_

While Fox struggled to contain his rage, Slippy prepared another question for the doctor, now having no reason to remain on the planet. "Well, if you didn't operate on the Demiurge, do you know about anyone who might have? Is there someone else out there who has parts of your research?"

Dr. Reige turned to the side and looked towards the ceiling. He remained lost in thought for upwards of ten seconds, and the silence became more pronounced and stressed as he pondered his answer. After fifteen seconds of silence, a bleak, shattered expression worked its way onto his face. Slippy deduced that he had struck a nerve with the doctor, although due to his already unstable nature and enormous size, he feared what might happen to him if he managed to anger Dr. Reige enough.

"Yes, there is," Reige whispered, almost on the verge of tears. "But I do not wish to talk about _her_. No – not after what she did to me. Why is this such a concern to you anyway?"

"The man that I showed you tried to wipe out all life in the known universe except for his own race. If the person who rebuilt him is still out there, there's going to be a threat until they're gone," Slippy explained.

Instead of responding, Reige turned his back to Slippy and Fox and held his head in his hands. "The man in the rendering you showed me looks precisely like my work. There's only one other individual who could have possibly done such a thing."

Struggling to maintain his composure as his nervousness about the Aparoids and his own dislike for the doctor grated on him, Fox snapped, "Who is _she_, then?"

Reige turned around and glared at Fox with a look of naked hatred, but his features gradually softened as he replied, "She's my wife. And no – I know what you're thinking. Don't even bother trying to ask me where she is – if I knew, I would have located her by now."

Fox and Slippy locked eyes, with the former giving the latter a silent cue to leave the laboratory. Slippy nodded and looked towards Dr. Reige to announce his departure, but in the blink of an eye, a powerful shock reverberated through the entire house. The lights in the lab and the accent sconces in the underground hallway flickered and then shut off for good, leaving the entire area in complete darkness.

In the blackness, Dr. Reige's voice broke the silence. "They destroyed my generator. I didn't think that was possible. Follow me – we need to get out of here."

After hearing the doctor state the obvious, Fox lost his temper. "Are you kidding me? Why haven't you left already?"

"Because if I had departed from his fetid planet, I would have lost all progress on my most recent research. I finished transferring the finished project onto a XHC card right when you most unscrupulously barged in on me. In fact, had you not wasted my time with your trifling questions, I would have been in orbit by now."

Slippy spoke up. "Wait – you have a ship?"

"Yes indeed. However, there is one small problem. You see, I removed a certain component that I thought would aid me in my research; and I could never figure out how to reconnect it afterwards."

"I might be able to help," Slippy replied. "I'm a mechanic. What part was it?"

"Hmm… If I remember correctly, it was the plasma fuel stabilizer manifold."

Slippy's voice took on a property of despair. "You've got to be kidding me. That's going to take an hour at least."

"Damn and blast! I knew it would serve no useful purpose, but I removed it anyway!" Reige barked. "We have no choice, though. You have to help me reattach that manifold. Have your most ungracious friend protect the hangar while we work, if you would."

"I don't think it's going to work like that," Slippy admitted. "Where's the hangar? How do we get to it?"

Scrounging the surface of the table for his XHC card until his hand came into contact with it, Reige answered, "Follow me. There's a door at the back of the lab that leads to an underground tunnel which will take us to the hangar."

Selecting his wrist interface's 'flashlight' option, Slippy lit up the laboratory, at least as much as an underpowered auxiliary flashlight would allow. He noticed a door directly ahead; and as much as he wanted to uncover what else the doctor kept in his lab, he followed the overgrown lupine through the lab exit door into a narrow corridor that gave way to a steep set of stairs. The door at the top flew open as Reige forced his weight upon it, leading his two unwanted guests into the blackened hangar space.

Slippy held up his wrist flashlight and scanned the area, noticing a smattering of opened crates containing various mechanical gadgets and parts that occupied the area around a large civilian version of the Ichtosian military's main gunship design. The ship's silver paint gleamed as Slippy pointed his light at it, but he also noticed a thin layer of dust that covered it. At that moment, he looked towards the ceiling and realized that escaping in the transport would not be possible. The roof looked to be made of reinforced concrete and metal – impossible to punch through; and with the power out, impossible to open. Reige noticed the same and let out an angry growl directed at the Aparoids for destroying his generator.

Turning towards Fox and Slippy, Reige clenched his fists and demanded, "How did you get here? The only way out is the way you came in."

Slippy bit his lip. "We've got a van parked in the town square, but I don't think there's any way that we'll be able to make it back to the spaceport where our fighters are docked before the Aparoids pick us off."

Baring his teeth, Reige replied, "We have no other option. You must make it to the spaceport. With any luck, there may be a ship that I can use to escape."

Slippy nervously glanced at Fox, who crossed his arms. "Yeah – good luck with that. They're probably pulling out right now. If we even make it back to the spaceport, it'll probably be abandoned."

At first, Dr. Reige made no response. Biting his claws, he approached an opened weapons crate near the front of his transport and picked up a heavy combat shotgun with a white, winged letter 'A' and the words 'Asgard Labs' printed on the side in a digital font. Without a word, he walked towards a metal door on the left side of the hangar and pushed it open. A flood of gray light washed into the room, along with the intense moisture of the monsoon that continued to pour outside. Then, he looked towards Fox and Slippy with a fearful expression, begging them to follow him outside.

Arming their weapons, the two pilots stepped out of the hangar after the doctor. The familiar feeling of the rain once again returned to plague Fox as he set foot on the cobblestone pavement outside the hangar. However, the torrential downpour moved to the back of his mind as a far more pertinent issue presented itself to him. Looking to the skies above him, he watched as hordes of flying Aparoids swarmed through the muggy air. He stopped trying to count them after reaching twenty and realizing that he had only scratched the surface of their ranks.

As he watched the skies with a feeling of ghastly horror, Dr. Reige shouted, "They're surrounding us! Do something about it!"

The call for help brought Fox's attention back to the area around Dr. Reige's residence and the town surrounding it. Near the cliff edge where he had seen Scarlet's apardoided form earlier, ten hulking Aparoid walkers lurked. Swarms of crawling variants scuttled out from between them; and when Fox looked behind him and to his right, he saw even more of the same Aparoids, with two enormous Aparoid Rollers thrown into the mix. They seemed to be taunting him and his group without making a sound, almost as if to drive the point home that they had no chance of surviving the onslaught.

"Fox! Our blasters aren't going to do anything against the big ones! What do we do?" Slippy screamed.

Although he refused to believe it, Fox knew that this was the end. Narrowing his eyes, he replied, "Send the Arwings back to the _Great Fox_. The Aparoids will destroy them if we don't, and there's no use in losing them, too. Peppy will know what happened to us."

"O…Okay, Fox," Slippy whimpered.

"I know, Slip. I never wanted it to end this way, either."

While Slippy reluctantly set to work programming the Arwings to automatically pilot themselves back to the Star Fox mothership, the masses of Aparoids surrounding the mountainside town began to creep towards the two pilots and the oversized doctor, who, despite still being angry about his house being invaded, knew better than to complain about it when near-certain death awaited his guests regardless. Neither Fox nor Slippy noticed it due to the gravity of their situation, but although his nervousness showed, he did not hold the same fear that his unwanted guests did for a reason that he had neglected to mention to them.

The Aparoids drew closer, gnashing their metallic appendages and hissing at their three targets. Fox and Slippy held their fingers over their blasters' triggers, knowing that the first shot would send the Aparoids into a full-on assault. When the bugs moved to within thirty feet, Fox gritted his teeth and prepared to die, but not without a fight. He looked over at Slippy, but as he opened his mouth to give the order to fire, he heard the sound of a spacecraft's engine in the sky above him. Both Slippy and Dr. Reige heard the noise as well and looked upwards in time to see a dark blue gunship seemingly materialize out of thin air. A red stripe ran down the length of the assault craft, which sported an angular design that could have been mistaken for a flying Aparoid if the viewer squinted enough. Two heavy turrets jutted out from the machine's opened cargo area, where two soldiers stood.

Fox's eyes widened as he realized what the gunship's crew intended to do. "Get down!" he screamed.

Within a fraction of a second, a flurry of plasma fire erupted from the gunship turrets, moving in a circular pattern around him, Slippy, and Dr. Reige. The ground shook beneath his feet as the gunfire pummeled the cobblestone street, sending stones and debris flying in all directions. Fox crouched down and covered his head as the firestorm from the gunship racked his ears, tearing through the Aparoids and the street surface at the same time. Fifteen seconds of unceasing fire pounded the mountain village before the guns fell silent. Opening his eyes and looking up, Fox watched the gunship descend to the shattered, rut-filled pavement fifteen feet in front of him. Pieces of Aparoids lay scattered about in all directions, although the flying swarms still plagued the air.

Inside the cargo area, a hooded vixen with magenta fur frantically waved for the three to make a run for the gunship before more Aparoids arrived. Kicking up loose stones in the process, Fox bolted towards the large assault craft with Slippy and Dr. Reige following close behind. As he leaped into the cargo area, he came face to face with the odd-colored vixen, whose facial structure reminded him of Krystal's. Four other soldiers crewed the gunship. A colossal polar bear wearing black combat armor sat in the ship's left machinegun turret, while an almost equally large longhorn bull manned the right turret. Behind the hooded vixen, a scrawny-looking raccoon held onto an overhead hand grip; and in the pilot's seat in the area ahead of the cargo area sat a black stallion who would have been considered large if it hadn't been for the bear and the bull manning the turrets behind him.

When Slippy and Dr. Reige entered the gunship, the vixen pressed a button near the gunship's open side panels, which caused the two machinegun turrets to rotate inwards back into the cargo hold. Then, the exterior doors slid shut, sealing the crew and the rescued fugitives inside. The moment the door shut, the pilot announced, "Reengaging stealth mode," before lifting off the ground. With the gunship gaining altitude, Fox seated himself on one of the crew benches next to Slippy and clipped his seat belt on. Dr. Reige took a seat next to the amphibian and breathed a sigh of relief before pulling his XHC card out of his coat pocket and holding it up to observe it.

Turning her attention to Fox and Slippy, the magenta-furred vixen ordered, "Turn off your wrist units and hand them over, or we'll be more than happy to kick your sorry arses out into space."

Fox balked. "Why? We just need to get back to our ship."

Shaking her head, the vixen replied, "That's not going to happen. Our boss has been keeping an eye on you for a while; and you're not going anywhere until you meet with him in person. So, unless you'd rather die, hand over your wrist units – now."

Fox growled and unfastened his wrist communicator, powering it off before reluctantly handing it over to the vixen. Slippy followed suit with the same amount of reluctance, knowing that without a live signal to track, Peppy would be even more convinced that his teammates had perished at the hands of the Aparoids.

Scowling, Fox glared at the vixen and asked, "If you won't take us back to our ship, where are you taking us?"

"We're taking you back to our base. The boss is in a meeting on Ichtos right now, but he'll see you before too long."

"You'd better be right. The rest of our team thinks that we're dead right now, and I don't even want to know what they'll do if we're gone for too long."

The vixen gave him a surly glance and retorted, "That's their problem. If your crew can't handle the death of one of their own, why did they sign up to be mercenaries in the first place?"

Fox looked at Slippy out of the corner of his eye. Then, letting out a sigh, he muttered, "I can't answer that. It was just something that happened. The pieces all came together at the right time. But if I'm honest, it was because I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps."

"And that's why our boss wants to talk to you specifically," the vixen responded.

Fox arched his eyebrows and spat back, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"More than you realize," she replied.

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):_

_Since this is an Oasis sequel, it's only fair that there would be a 13,000 word chapter at some point. That's actually a new record for me as far as chapter length goes. I hope they don't all turn out that way, though. Next chapter will switch back to Krystal's perspective, and hopefully it won't take me five weeks to write that one.  
_


	6. The Letter

**⑥ The Letter ⑥  
**

Downcast and weary after another frustrating day at work, Krystal trudged back to her apartment, covered in sweat and wanting nothing more than to spend the next hour relaxing in a warm bath in her suite. Sliding her key card into the reader next to the complex's left side entrance, she pushed the door open and breathed a sigh of relief after checking the halls and not seeing anyone. Her mind alerted her to Lilac's presence in her room on the eighth floor, although she had expected her to be there.

Begrudgingly, she admitted to herself that she needed to visit the apartment's mail room in case an important document had arrived for her. Before now, the majority of her mail consisted of spam coupons and Cornerian civic forms related to her new residency on Corneria, which she despised filling out. Knowing that in the four days since her last visit to the mail room, something would have shown up, she walked through the halls on the otherwise empty bottom floor until she reached a red door with the Cornerian postal service's globe-shaped emblem on it. Before entering the mail room, she felt around with her telepathy in hopes that the room would be empty. To her relief, no mental signatures entered her mind.

"_It's all going to be spam mail again,"_ she thought, pushing the door open and looking for her apartment's number amidst the sea of tiny, wall-mounted boxes until she caught a glimpse of the number '804' on the fourth row of mailboxes on the right wall. Expecting nothing more than frustration, she pulled out her key ring and unlocked her box. As she expected, numerous flyers and brochures filled the box, although it seemed emptier than usual. Pulling the unwanted mail out of the box and tossing it into the nearby trash can, her hand came into contact with a white envelope with an unusual crosshatch texture that set it apart from the government papers that she had become used to receiving.

Her eyes widened as she slid it out of the box and noticed the writing in the upper left hand corner. Instead of a return address, the only writing in the corner amounted to the word 'Anonymous' written in native Cerinian. Her own address and name in Cornerian occupied the center of the envelope, and the postal marks on the top right corner indicated that it had originated from a nearby location.

Looking over her shoulder to make sure no one had entered the room without her knowledge, she ripped open the envelope with her claws with abandon, still being careful not to tear the piece of thick paper inside. Then, she pulled the envelope's contents out and realized that she had received a video-letter, of all things. A faintly luminescent window covered most of the paper's front side, and in the center of the sheet, a series of white Cerinian characters flashed in and out. She recognized the phrase as a command to speak the words 'play file' in her native language.

"_Definitely a security measure,"_ she thought. _"Who would send me something like this anyway?"_

For a moment, a surge of fear spiked through her. The thought occurred to her that one of her father's associates had managed to track her, although she wondered how anyone could have known what she had done to arrive in her present state, telepath or not. Regardless, she knew that she did not want to play the file with Lilac anywhere nearby. A subtle intuition warned her that the letter had something to do with her past, and her friend had no business knowing about that.

She hesitated for a second, then shoved the folded video letter back into the envelope before leaving the mailroom and exiting the apartment building entirely. She knew that Lilac could mentally track her for over five miles, but the range of detailed thought reading for a Noble Order Cerinian such as her only extended to around a half mile at most. Walking along the downtown Corneria sidewalk and trying to avoid attracting any undue attention to herself, she fought to calm her nerves as she sought out a solitary place where she could listen to her anonymously-composed message without being intruded on. In the early evening hours, the streets and sidewalks swarmed with Cornerian natives, making her task far more difficult than she had hoped. Nevertheless, after nearly a mile of walking and fighting through the foot traffic, she located a building under construction next to the sidewalk. No workers or machines seemed to be anywhere nearby, and the high-rise structure looked to be mostly completed apart from the final touches. Some scaffolding remained, but the building looked more than stable enough to enter.

Breaking out of the foot traffic, she slipped into the darkened building and hoped that no one would come after her and order her to leave. She scanned the area with her telepathy and determined that even though several people had seen her run into the construction area, none of them intended to do anything about it. Still breathing heavily, she crept into the darkest corner of the unoccupied space and pulled her video letter out of its envelope.

"Fcuo vaco," she whispered, holding the thick piece of holo-paper as close to her muzzle as possible.

In response to her Cerinian command, the white paper screen abruptly flashed blue and then faded into a shade of midnight. A moment later, an image of a woman appeared on the screen. Numerous information screens and holographic monitors surrounded her, but her appearance struck Krystal as far more interesting than the objects in the background. The video showed her from the waist up, wearing a form-fitting black bodysuit that glowed with a series of neon blue conduit patterns that zigzagged across most of her body, which looked far more youthful than it actually was.

The woman's rich indigo fur caught her eyes the instant that the screen changed, cementing her fear that the message had something to do with her past. The vixen's long, midnight blue hair fell to her shoulders and curled at the ends, where it faded to white, while her glowing sapphire eyes seemed to pierce Krystal's soul with an intensity that she could feel, even through a piece of video paper. An untrained eye would have pinned her age as no older than thirty-five, but Krystal knew that her kind aged more gracefully than most others; and thus, she knew that her contact had likely lived for over fifty years.

In Cerinian, the foreign vixen began her message. "Greetings, Krystal. If this is not you, please say 'stop' now."

When Krystal said nothing, the older Cerinian continued, "I'm sorry that I had to use such a strange method to get in touch with you – it's just that after what happened to Cerinia, your government has been keeping a very close watch on all Cerinian activity in your galactic center. A letter was the best way to get through to you without having to risk compromising this message."

Krystal took a nervous, fearful breath. _"Oh no – they know what I did."_

While she seated herself on the floor in the corner of the abandoned building, the anonymous woman explained, "I sent you this message to tell you that I'm sorry. I know – you don't understand, but I'll explain everything." For a moment, she placed a hand over her chest and lowered her ears as if to express sorrow about something. "Your suffering is caused by my actions. I am responsible for what became of your father. I reconstructed him, I influenced his ideas about Palingenesis, and I engineered Gematria for him. You probably hate me already, and that's fine – I want you to hate me, because I deserve it. I did it all because I just couldn't stand watching this universe tear itself apart anymore. You probably heard some version of this from your father, but you'll hear it from me now. I've spent my whole life watching the horrid people of this universe destroy each other, their worlds, and in some ways, even their own souls. After a while, I just couldn't stand it anymore. I didn't want to be a murderer – I just wanted to fix this sodding universe."

Gritting her teeth in angst, the vixen admitted, "I used to believe what all the Cerinians believed about themselves – that they were the 'chosen' species; the 'master race' of this galaxy. It was all a lie – we are no better than anyone else. We are just as wicked, evil, and corrupt as those people we call 'inferiors'. I didn't realize it until I watched our world die at the hands of your father. I watched the lengths that he and his men went to for their agenda – my agenda. I never thought it would turn out the way it did. I thought Gematria would fix everything, but now I'm happy that it was stopped before it could be used. I just wanted to end the suffering…and all I did was create more of it."

Krystal struggled to repress the urge to rip the video-paper to pieces as a tear rolled out of her eye. At the same time, she looked at her contact's face and realized that she too was crying. "Krystal, part of the reason I sent this to you is because I won't be alive for much longer. I've been cheating death for over fifteen years, and it's finally catching up to me. I can feel myself dying every day, and I can't leave this universe without doing something to make amends for the pain that I caused. There's something I want to give to you, but I couldn't risk sending it to you with the envelope. The galactic coordinates to the meeting spot are 104 – 90 – 40 according to your new planet's measurements. It's where a planet called Sauria is located at this point in its orbit. You'll find me near the Ocean Force Point Temple in the Cape Claw region of the planet. Please come, but don't bring anyone with you. I'll give you three days to meet me, but after that, I can't guarantee that I'll still be alive. Don't worry about finding me when you arrive – you'll know where to go."

Pausing to wipe her eyes, the vixen hardened her expression. "There's one more thing – and you would be wise to listen to me: your father's men are still out there, and they want revenge for what happened to Cerinia and Regency. Your new home planet is one of their main targets. Please – don't let them get what they want. Their cruelty knows no limits. Believe me, I've seen it. I'm sorry, Krystal – it wasn't supposed to end this way. I should have known better."

Wiping a bitter tear out of her eye, the vixen reached forwards and pressed an unseen button, ending the message and returning Krystal to the reality of her surroundings. A feeling of rage grabbed at her heart at the realization that her past still had some life left in it. Biting her lip, she pondered the alien vixen's warning about her father's followers. She knew better than to believe that all of them had perished on Cerinia. For all she knew, thousands of hostile Cerinians could have survived; and with nothing left to live for, they would have no trouble coming together in an act of blind revenge against the two powers responsible for preventing Gematria from being launched and Palingensis from being achieved.

Although she kept it hidden from Fox, she still felt traces of sympathy to her father's cause every time an offworld 'inferior' gave her a lusting glance or a twisted look. Now though, hearing Gematria's creator admit to wrongdoing forced her to abandon all traces of fondness for what her father had planned to do. She hated hearing the vixen admit that Cerinians were no less evil than the horrid offworlders that she despised ever so much, to the point of clenching her fists in rage and shoving the video-letter back into its envelope with a disgusted snarl. Breathing heavily, she crept out of the unfinished building and made her way back into the sea of people traversing the downtown sidewalks.

Twenty minutes later, she reentered her apartment building and made her way to the main elevator. She knew Lilac would likely ask her why she had fled the building after visiting the mail room, but she felt confident that her friend did not suspect anything being amiss. When the elevator stopped on the eighth floor, she stepped out and walked towards her room. Pulling her apartment key card out of her purse, she slid it into her door and pushed it open.

Inside, she found Lilac reading a book on their now-shared bed, lying on her chest and wearing a white tank top and a yellow thong. Krystal did not fault her friend for her shameless lack of clothing around her, but it still bothered her somewhat. A moment later, however, her attention drifted to the blue book that her friend seemed entranced with. She cringed, realizing that Lilac had managed to unearth the Cerinian relationship advice book that she and Fox had read through while on Skallis.

"_I didn't even know I still had that thing,"_ she thought.

Without making eye contact, Lilac commented, "This book's a riot. Do these authors really think Cerinians like us can be seduced with one simple formula?"

Krystal grimaced. "I don't think that's the point of it. They're trying to explain our differences to people who've never met one of our kind before. I thought it was quite interesting." Lilac made no response, so Krystal gave her a cross glance and instead asked, "How is that _thing_ comfortable?"

Grinning, Lilac stole a glance at her lingerie and chuckled, "You'd be surprised. I've got a few others that you can try on if you'd like."

"I'd rather not," Krystal replied, dropping her purse on her dresser and opening the top middle drawer where she kept most of her casual clothing. She walked into her bathroom carrying a fresh set of clothes and noticed a distinct icy fragrance that she associated with scent took her back to her childhood and her earlier days spent with her friend, before the High Council interned her in the Temple and stole the joy from her life. Sighing, she removed her clothes and turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature with the built-in electronic display before she stepped in and breathed out a blissful sigh as the water soaked her fur and ran down her body.

After a minute, she reached for her fur brush that hung from the sliding shower door and brought it over to her bottle of soap formulated for canids with delicate fur. As she squeezed a healthy blob of soap onto her brush and began scrubbing herself, a sudden sensation of pain, agony, and death racked her mind. She dropped the brush and fell to the shower floor. All the while, a cacophony of screams filled her ears.

The extrasensory recollection of Cerinia's demise flashed through her mind's eye, but after a matter of horrifying seconds, she realized that the anguish did not originate from her memories. Rather, it came from her surroundings. Forgetting to turn off the water, she forced the sliding shower door open; but before she had a chance to move any farther, Lilac burst through the unlocked bathroom door with a horrified expression that matched the pain in Krystal's mind.

"Krystal! S…Something's happening outside! I hear gunshots!"

In the heat of the moment, Krystal's lack of clothing and soaked fur hardly registered to her. Through the opened door, the distant sound of automatic plasma assault weapons shattered the controlled tumult of the Cornerian downtown area. When the rifles stopped firing, numerous other blasts pierced the air with a pulsating, ethereal sound that only a Cerinian combat staff could make. Reaching for a towel, Krystal threw it around her waist and followed Lilac back into the bedroom and then towards the outdoor balcony overlooking the city street below.

She stopped at the sliding glass door separating the balcony from the bedroom and looked towards the street below. Traffic froze in place, and hundreds of civilians on the sidewalks darted for the nearest cover available. At the same time, a battalion of Cornerian police officers pushed their way through the chaos, armed with military-grade weaponry reserved for use only in the most urgent situations.

"Don't panic… Don't panic…" Krystal whispered, not only to Lilac, but also to herself. "Quick – turn on the TV and see what's going on out there."

Lilac obeyed and grabbed the flatscreen remote off the black nightstand next to the bed. One press of the power button brought the wall-mounted screen to life. Near the bottom of the screen, white letters on a red scrolling banner declared "Cerinians Attack Corneria City. More than three hundred dead."

The voice of the local channel's news anchor faltered as the camera feed cut to the image of an all-too-familiar black battleship ascending into the evening sky from the Cornerian military complex on the edge of the metropolis. Shuddering, Krystal gazed at the Cerinian hieroglyphic '_Aesir_' painted onto the ship's main hull, accompanying the silver spiked globe emblem identifying her late father's legion. Lilac stood next to her, transfixed with fear and unable to understand any motivation for the unprovoked massacre. On the television screen, swarms of Cornerian fighters surrounded the hulking _Aesir _while it broke through the cloud cover over the city. None of them appeared to do any kind of damage to the dreadnaught, already too close to orbit for a comparable Cornerian warship to launch an attack on it.

Krystal ripped the remote out of Lilac's trembling hand and powered off the television before grabbing the balcony curtains and pulling them shut.

While Krystal gathered her white towel off the floor and tied it around her waist after having dropped it, Lilac asked, "Krystal, what are we going to do?"

"We can't go outside," she replied. "The Cornerians will come after us if they see us. Dammit – I knew I should have bought fur dye by now."

"But we can't stay here forever. We'll have to go out at some point," Lilac objected.

Krystal nibbled at her claws, then realized that she had left the shower on. "I'll call Fox. He'll be able to help us."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know, but I know he'll do anything to help us out of here." Krystal replied. "Here – let me call him."

While Lilac brushed her bristling fur and took deep breaths to calm herself, Krystal opened her purse on the dresser and pulled out her rectangular comms device – another gift from Fox given to her after she arrived on Corneria. Pulling up her contacts, she scrolled down until Fox's name appeared. She activated the call, although she half expected Fox to reject it on account of the undisclosed mission she knew he had been tasked with. Five hushed rings reached her ears, after which Fox's pre-recorded voice message began. _"Sorry, but I'm not available at this time. If this is about a job or a contract, please call the Star Fox team's main extension. Otherwise, leave a message, and I'll try to get back to you."_

Krystal's breathing intensified, and her voice reflected her internal fear that continued to brew. "Fox, this is Krystal. The city's been attacked by my father's…I mean…by Cerinians, and I can't leave my apartment because I don't know what these people will do to me. Please – help me, Fox. I need you to call me back." Letting out an exasperated sigh, she ended her message and tossed her phone back into her purse. At the same time, a feeling of panic entered her mind. She knew Lilac would pick up on her brief, unintentional mention of her father and ask her about it, which would effectively end their friendship at the worst possible time.

Krystal glanced at Lilac, seated on the bed with her knees pulled to her chest and her tail between her legs. She still looked frazzled, but her expression seemed no more inquisitive than it had before Krystal's message. Hoping that her friend hadn't noticed her mention her father's troops, Krystal slipped back into the bathroom and turned off the shower before dressing herself in the casual clothes she had selected minutes earlier. Her outfit consisted of a plain gray tank top and white shorts; fitting, considering that she had no intention of leaving the apartment anytime soon. As much as she wanted to turn the news back on to find out more about the ongoing situation, she feared that she would hear word about a Cerinian crackdown in the metropolitan area. Not knowing of any other native bluefurs on the planet, she felt especially concerned about herself and Lilac. Corneria had laws protecting legal aliens, but with the public paranoia over the sudden attack on the planet's largest cultural center, she worried that those laws would mean next to nothing if the time came to enforce them.

While Krystal dressed herself and set to work cleaning the water off the bathroom floor, Lilac's mind regressed into deep, concerned thought. _"The attack had something to do with her father? Why? What does that mean? Does this have anything to do with why I haven't been able to get in touch with my mom or Cerinia in general? I don't want to ask her, but I know I'm going to have to. She's trying to hold something back from me – I can tell it's something she's afraid of me knowing. I can't go on wondering what's going on, though. I have to know about this."_

A moment later, Krystal emerged from the bathroom, as fearful and concerned as before. Lilac knew her friend would resist her with all of her mental energy, but she had to know the truth. With a faltering voice, she looked Krystal in the eyes and said, "I need to know what happened to Cerinia."

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

The sunset gleaming through the bulletproof glass wall near the back of the Ichtosian Supreme Commander's boardroom shone onto the immense, polished wood table, around which twenty stately wood and leather chairs were positioned. At the moment, only one person occupied the room – the Commander himself, a dark red-furred vulpine male thirty-one years of age. Most of his subjects thought him to be too young to lead an entire planet, but his close associates understood that his maturity exceeded his age. He wore a long, gray trench coat with his faction's silver phoenix emblem pinned onto his chest pocket, along with a matching commissar cap decorated with six small stars that indicated him as the Supreme Commander of both the army and the planet at large.

He glanced at his watch in expectation as the seconds rolled by. Waiting for guests infuriated him, and his latest scheduled visitor had already failed to show up three – now four – minutes after the appointed time. Letting out a frustrated sigh, the Commander sat up in his chair and tapped his claws on the table's surface. Fifteen seconds later, the dual boardroom doors at the other end of the room swung open to reveal the dictator's guest.

A ragged set of black combat armor covered the visitor's body, decorated by two bandoleers and numerous holsters for both firearms and grenades. At the Commander's request, he carried no weapons at the time, and his frustration showed as he approached the Commander and moved towards the seat closest to him. As was normal for him, the dictator locked eyes with his guest and glared at him with a steely emotionless gaze. His visitor's vulpine muzzle showed significant signs of aging, with gray fur encroaching on his natural red pelt. A black eye patch covered his left eye, and a gaping scar jutted out from under the black cloth. A noticeable cut in the edge of his right ear also stood out to the Commander, who assumed that he had sustained far more injuries than his clothing suggested.

He walked with a loose, yet contained swagger that the Commander had a way of nullifying with his personal gravitas alone. Intriguing, the dictator thought, realizing that his guest held no fear of him whatsoever. Pulling out the chair closest to the Commander, the aged fox took his seat and waited for his host to speak.

"You made me wait," he growled.

"Your security detail held me up," the visitor retorted.

Frowning, the Commander steepled his fingers on the table in front of him and said, "It's still not a legitimate excuse. That time isn't coming back, but I digress. The reason I called _you _of all people is because I've heard that you're in the business of making the impossible happen."

The visitor nodded.

"Well, I have an opportunity for you. I'm not willing to risk losing any more of my own men than I already have, which is why I brought you in. Four days ago, one of my more important warships – the _Amethyst – _suddenly disappeared in the galactic sector between Cerinia and Ichtos. The last data from the _Amethyst_ suggests that it hit a gravity well and was pulled to the surface of an unknown planet that doesn't match any of our records. The entire crew was killed, except for one officer, who managed to send out a distress beacon. I would very much like for her to be returned to me – alive."

Reaching for his personal comms device, he placed it face-up on the boardroom desk and activated its screen hologram, prompting a three-dimensional image of Brigadier General Volkchelovek to appear in the air above the device. "Should you manage to bring her back to me, I will reward you with seven million Ichtosian Ghants – which converts to around fifteen million Galactic Converted Credits. There will be no payment up front. You will only be paid if you complete the objective, and that is final."

"That's a lot to pay out for the rescue of just one person," the visitor muttered. "She's your playmate, isn't she?"

The Commander gave his guest a dirty glance and bared his canines. "That's not your business, Specter. Do you accept or not?"

"It sounds like a borderline suicide mission if there's a gravity well involved," the older fox replied. "I'll do it, but only if you raise the payout to nine million Ghants."

"Eight million," the Commander countered. "That's final. I'm not going to give you any more than that, and if you try to bargain with me again, I'll kick you out of here with nothing."

Frustration etched itself onto Specter's muzzle. With a frown, he extended his hand for the Commander to shake and said, "It's a deal. I'll take care of it ASAP."

The Commander nodded and returned Specter's handshake. "Very good. Report to me when you have retrieved Brigadier General Volkchelovek, and I'll make arrangements for your payment. Now, please leave me. I have an important issue to attend to."

Specter stood up, pushed his chair in, and exited the room without a sound, save for the tapping of his boots on the hardwood floor. When the double boardroom doors rotated shut, the Commander picked up his communicator and placed it in front of him before activating the holographic communication mode and placing a call that he had arranged for before his brief meeting with the namesake of the Specter mercenary unit.

The holographic transmission showed a blank screen for several seconds, and then the image of a middle-aged husky in an executive suit appeared above his personal communicator. "Prime Minister Lago," the Commander began. "Thank you for your time. I know how little of it you have at your disposal."

Rolling his eyes, Lago replied, "Don't patronize me, 'Commander.' You should be happy that I even bothered to set up this call in the first place. What is it that you want, anyway?"

"I want to know what you did with the Gematria catalysts that you found on Regency."

"You can't be serious. Why the hell would you expect me to give you that information?"

"So you _do_ know where they are," the Commander replied. "I'd hope that you plan on getting rid of them soon. There are still some Cerinian rebels out there, you know."

Biting his lip, Lago snapped, "Just get to the point. What do you really want?"

For a moment, the Commander looked away from his communicator and gazed at the sun as it began to set below the towering city behind him. Then, he narrowed his eyes and explained, "My sources tell me that the planet Zharon has been completely overrun by insect-like parasites called Aparoids. They're afraid that the infection could spread here if not dealt with immediately. Ichtos is, after all, the closest planet to Zharon. We both know that Gemtria will kill anything that doesn't have a certain strand of Cerinian DNA in it. I would assume that includes Aparoids as well. So, what I'm suggesting is that you load up the Gemtria catalysts and detonate them in Zharon's atmosphere. That way, it will kill off the Aparoids and eliminate Gematria all at once."

Lago paused for a moment and scratched his muzzle in thought. "I hate having to credit you with a good idea, but this is brilliant," he admitted. "I'll speak with the General of the Armies about this and get back to you about the outcome of that meeting."

"Thank you, Prime Minister," the Commander replied, closing the call and leaning back in his chair.

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):  
_

_Alright, here's another chapter. I don't know when I'll be able to get the next one out, since I'm very close to finishing another Parallax chapter (Yikes - that story has some problems) that I'm planning to post before I start work on the next N3 one. At any rate, I have no intention of allowing this story to take the same twist as _The Oasis. _What I mean by that is having five or six early chapters where basically nothing important happens. This is not that kind of story. Hopefully that was already obvious._


	7. Gravity

**⑦ Gravity ⑦  
**

After over an hour of sublight-speed space travel aboard Specter's gunship, Fox and Slippy's unrequested trip came to an end. As the assault craft touched down, the two side panels slid open, accompanied by the rest of the gunship's crew unbuckling their safety belts. With the engines powering down, the hooded vixen glanced at Fox and ordered, "You two follow me."

Fox looked at Voltimure, who seemed lost in his own world of thoughts. "What about him?"

"Him too," she replied, giving the oversized lupine doctor a quick shove in the arm to get his attention. In response, he sat upright with a sharp yelp that would have made one think that he had been shot; but after a few seconds, he calmed down and followed the vixen as she led Fox and Slippy out of the gunship.

Climbing down the gunship's side strut, Fox set foot on a shiny hangar floor that stretched for over two hundred yards in length and seventy-five in width. Eight space fighters of varying makes and models stood in an organized line along the left side of the hangar, while the right belonged to a squad of gunships similar to the one behind him. One oversized transport ship occupied the back of the hangar area, just barely tall enough to hold the massive ship that looked like it could transport three of the gunships at one time.

The vixen led her guests towards a door on the left side of the hangar and opened it to reveal a wide hallway marked by numerous doors on both sides. "These are our guest quarters. Take your pick," she told Fox, Slippy, and Voltimure.

With a biting voice, Fox snapped, "How long do you plan to keep us here, anyway?"

The vixen looked over her shoulder and glared at Fox with steely eyes. "Until you speak with our leader."

"And when is that?"

"Whenever he's ready," she replied. "Now, you are free to move about the base, but don't even think about trying to leave. All the ships are coded with a genetic signature that only responds to members of Specter, just so you know." With that, she walked down the hallway and disappeared behind a door at the end of it, leaving Fox fuming with his fists clenched.

"So, they're keeping us prisoner, huh?" he growled, looking at Slippy out of the corner of his eye.

Slippy shook his head. "It's still better than being killed by the Aparoids. We might as well try to make the best of it. We won't be here forever, right?"

Fox hesitated, then replied, "We'd better not be."

After eyeing one of the crew quarters ahead of him, Slippy turned around to check on Voltimure, only to find that he had already vanished into the room behind him. The click of the door's latch confirmed his realization and left the hallway empty apart from Fox and himself. "Time to see what these rooms have, I guess," he mumbled, moving towards the closest door to his left and opening it.

"Yeah," Fox grunted.

While his counterpart stepped into the left-side door, Fox opened the door to his right and entered the darkened room behind it. A quick flip of the nearby light switch bathed the room in white, not only from the overhead panel lights themselves, but also from the stark white implements inside the room. The room contained relatively few amenities, which amounted to a white bed barely large enough for him, a tiny kitchen with only a microwave, a stove, a miniature refrigerator, and a few small cabinets; and the most basic shower enclosure that still could have been called that, positioned in the back left corner of the room behind a blank, white sheet. The left wall held up a flat television, positioned flush with the wall. It seemed like the only item in the room that served a purpose other than forced utilitarianism.

With nothing better to do, Fox scowled, closed the room's door behind him, and located the remote on the nightstand next to the bed. He powered the television on, displaying a massive channel listing that looked like it could have spanned both the Lylat and the neighboring Faulian system. After scrolling through the list and wondering why Specter's crew had bothered to amass such an enormous selection of channels, he located one of Corneria City's main networks. He did not plan to stay on the channel, but when he pressed the 'select' button that commanded the screen to change, his blood ran cold and prevented him from taking any further action.

On the screen in front of him, he watched the live news broadcast showing the Demiurge's battleship _Aesir_ ascending into the Cornerian skies before disappearing above the cloud cover. The red banner below the video feed told him everything that Krystal had already learned – that Corneria City had been subjected to a lightning-quick attack from the same Cerinians he had fought on their home planet only a matter of weeks ago.

Fox's mind leapt to Krystal's situation. Although he held out hope that she had nothing to do with the attack, he did not rule her participation out as a possibility. However, he realized that if she was innocent, her life could have been in danger. Few Cornerians knew anything about the Cerinians or the fate of their homeworld; and with the public paranoia fueled by the massacre, Fox worried that his blue friend would be killed one way or another.

"_What a perfect time to be trapped here. Peppy and Falco think both I and Slippy are dead, Krystal's life is in danger_, _and I can't do anything about it! I hope Peppy hears about the attack and goes back to Corneria to help her. Wait – he doesn't even know where to find her in the first place. How do I know if he even cares?"_

Realizing the full extent of his plight, he let his head droop to his chest and sighed. _"If they don't let me out of here very soon, I'm going to have to do something drastic. But before that, I'm going to let their boss know exactly what I think of him."_

\+ 0 +

Leaving Fox, Slippy, and Voltimure in the crew quarters hallway, the magenta-furred vixen unlocked the unmarked door at the end of the hallway and opened it. The door led into a dark-painted area dominated by the color black and interspersed with red accents. Even the conical wall sconces broadcasted a warm red radiance onto the walls and floors in the otherwise stifling area. Ahead of her was a small living room, complete with a black couch and two faux leather armchairs overlooked by a large screen on the back wall. An opened door beckoned on her right, leading the vixen into a red-painted bedroom with an aura similar to the rest of the private area.

Standing in front of the king bed in the center of the room, she pulled off her black, hooded robe and slipped out of the stifling bodysuit that she wore underneath it. She had expected Zharon to be humid, but the extremes of both temperature and moisture in the air caused her to regret her wardrobe choice the instant her gunship broke through the planet's atmosphere. Dropping her clothes on the bed, she walked in front of the large mirror that hung on the room's left wall and forced herself to look at her reflection. Her own undressed image reminded her about why she always made certain to cover almost every inch of fur on her body with some kind of clothing even in intolerably hot weather. Scores of scars, gashes, and small areas where her fur had died greeted her grief-filled eyes. A large slash mark on her neck stood out more than the other wounds, explaining her fondness for clothing with turtleneck collars.

Her eyes drifted to the two identical scars on both thighs, similar to Krystal's apart from the positive connotation that the blue vixen's tattoos suggested. Instead of a pattern that graced its bearer such as Krystal, hers held a darker meaning. Deep gashes cut into the shape of a Cerinian hieroglyphic spelled out the term 'exile' in her native tongue. The Cerinian language often used the same word to describe multiple terms, and in the ancient language, the term 'exile' was used interchangeably with the word 'accursed.'

After staring into the mirror for several seconds, she frowned and looked away. More than anything else about her scarred body, she despised her natural magenta fur color – the only reason her life had been defined by suffering and abuse rather than the comfort and security that her family lineage would have been able to provide. That is, if her fur had been blue. Before the planet's destruction, the Cerinian High Council held that Cerinian children born with the rare, abnormal fur color that she possessed had been born with an irremovable curse that damned the child to a life of service to evil.

For her to have survived in exile for over twenty years in the northern wastelands of Cerinia could have been considered a miracle; but even so, she felt little joy in her current position apart from the love she shared with Specter's leader in spite of their significant age difference. More than twenty years separated the two in terms of physical maturity, but she chose to overlook the fact that her mate was effectively twice her age, instead choosing to focus on the genuine care that he showed her when it seemed that no one else would.

Turning away from the mirror, she moved towards the closet she shared with Specter before her communicator chirped, indicating a call from the mercenary team's leader. With expectation, she reached for the electronic device that lay on her bed and answered it. "Mystic here. What is it?"

"You know it's me, Lara. You don't have to try to sound so professional," Specter replied, his warm, raspy voice setting the magenta vixen at ease. "Listen, the Commander gave us a mission. He wants us to track a distress signal from an unidentified planet that is confirmed to have an operational gravity well. It's got something to do with an officer of his. He made it seem like she was very important to him, and we're only getting paid if we bring her back to him alive."

"How much is he offering?" asked Lara.

"Eight million Ghants. This could be a suicide mission, but jobs that pay that much don't show up every day."

"And I'm guessing you want my help with this?" Lara suggested.

Specter's voice dropped in pitch. "Yes. We don't know anything about the target location. Your telepathy is the only possible advantage we could have. The plan is to enter the planet's atmosphere using our fighters, with one small transport ship following us to extract the target. Gravity wells are deadly to capital ships, but useless against fighters and personal vessels. So, I'm confident that we won't have any issues with that."

"Convincing enough," Lara replied, "Who else do you plan on bringing along? Who's going to fly the transport?"

Specter paused, then answered, "Caroso. Make sure he's geared up before I get back."

"I'll do that, but when will you be getting back, Specter?"

"About a half hour. Once I'm back, we'll get the transport ready and set the coordinates for the target location."

"Sounds good. Oh – there is one other thing," Lara replied.

"What's that?"

"It's Fox. We extracted him and his teammate from Zharon, along with a civilian who looks like a doctor. You should probably try to talk to Fox as soon as possible. He's not happy about being here."

"I'm sure he's not, but he'll have to hold on until this mission is accomplished. That's final."

"Understood, Specter," said Lara, closing the comms channel and placing her communicator back on the bed. Sighing, she opened her closet door and selected a lightweight set of matching combat fatigues with a magenta over black color scheme. Despite her trust in her leader, she felt uneasy about the upcoming mission. Something about their destination's description bothered her, but she could not put her finger on it.

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

The lights of distant stars streaked by in the void of superluminal speed as both vessels neared their enigmatic destination. The first ship, a two-seat attack craft, was manned by both Specter and Mystic; while their fellow crew member Caroso piloted the accompanying gunship that followed them. Radio chatter remained at a level of near silence the entirety of the trip, with the only real conversation belonging to Mystic and Specter as they spoke to each other in the privacy of the tandem cockpit. Both of them knew what to expect with the gravity well. The device would cause them to lose control of their ship in the upper atmosphere, but due to the device's limitations, they would theoretically be able to right the fighter before any real danger came into play. There was, however, one issue in particular that worried all three of the mission personnel – the fact that leaving the planet would require disabling the gravity well. Specter believed that the well's extra gravity would pull them close to the location of the disturbance, but Mystic still thought that he was too optimistic about it. At the very least, she expected to spend well over twenty-four hours on the planet's surface attempting to disable the gravity well.

Suddenly, the fighter lowed to its subluminal cruising speed, accompanied by a robotic voice that only bothered to speak up when a ship-related crisis arose. "Warning – gravitational anomaly detected. Lightdrive deactivated." However, the Specter and Mystic paid no attention to the voice. Out of the tandem fighter's front canopy, a ghostly, black planet crawled out of the darkness in the distance ahead of them. On the extreme right side of the darkened globe, a network of six lines jutted out from a central point. The ever-stoic Specter stared at it with an unmoving, steely gaze, but behind him, Mystic's fur stood on end.

"Specter – that planet…it's…"

Unable to look over his shoulder due to his safety harness, the older vulpine replied, "What is it, Lara?"

"Before you rescued me on Cerinia, I met someone who told me about places like this. If what he said was true, there are three of these planets out there. He told me that they were Progenitor homeworlds – the origin points for the first sapient cultures in existence."

"Precursor races? I'm guessing they died off a long time ago," Specter implied, presenting a question at the same time.

Mystic nodded. "Yes – they don't exist anymore. I'm not sure why, though. The person who told me this said that he'd been exiled by the Cerinian High Council for knowing about the homeworlds."

Specter's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Sounds like they were trying to hide their existence. Why, though?"

"I don't know, but it seems like somebody found this one a long time before we did," Mystic replied.

A moment later, the ship vibrated and began picking up speed in the direction of the planet's central point, marked by the glowing blue circle. In the front seat, Specter barked, "Hang on – this is going to get rough." Opening his comms line to the gunship following him, he shouted, "Caroso, follow my lead, and don't panic. There will be enough time to regain control of the gunship after we break the atmosphere."

"If you say so, Boss," the black feline replied with a nervous tone of voice.

Specter knew that his teammate did not expect a positive outcome, but he intended to prove him wrong despite not feeling confident about it himself. The two ships continued to build up speed until they plunged into the planet's atmosphere. The pull of the gravity only increased as they sped through the mesosphere; and Specter wondered if the ships would be able to withstand the force of entry. His fighter rocked violently for half a minute, then the pull of gravity lessened to a more manageable level as he had expected it to.

"_A capital ship would have been too far gone to slow down after that. I'm amazed anyone could have survived crashing into the planet at that speed."_

The two-seat fighter descended into the troposphere, only to be greeted by sheets of driving rain and a moonless, black night that engulfed the dense forests below. With the gravitational anomaly a past issue at this point, Specter took the opportunity to survey the landscape below. Between the colossal forest trees that somehow managed to grow in the blackness of night, several small buildings peeked out from among the limbs, their glowing blue trim edges betraying their locations. However, one looming obelisk several miles away attracted his attention the most.

His radar indicated nothing in the air anywhere nearby, but his life-source counter registered a small number of life-forms that roamed the jungle below. The scanner had no way of distinguishing between primitive and intelligent life, which did nothing to improve his mood.

As Caroso's gunship pulled alongside his fighter, the vulpine accessed his craft's main interface screen and pulled up the tracking beacon belonging to the Ichtosian Generalissimo's favorite officer. "Be ready for a trap, you two. I'd be surprised if the beacon was actually coming from the Brigadier General."

Mystic closed her eyes for a moment and reached out with her telepathy, then replied, "No, Specter – she's the only one around here. It's not a trap."

"Strange," Specter growled. "Alright, then. Head to the location that should be showing up on your HUD right now, Caroso. We'll follow you there. When the Commander's sweetheart is loaded into the gunship, Mystic and I will look for a way to disable that gravity well so we can get out of this hellhole."

"Got it, Specter," Caroso replied, banking his gunship to the left, in the direction of the distress beacon that appeared on his central interface. A small mountain marked the highest point of the area, and the beacon emanated from a point halfway up the oversized hill that bristled with forest trees in all but one area. Without waiting for Specter to give him the landing order, he slowed the gunship over the small clearing that was barely large enough for the craft to fit through. Then, he lowered it to the ground, being mindful to watch for protruding branches on the way down. After several tense seconds, the gunship touched down with a faint vibration.

Knowing that only one ship could fit into the clearing, Caroso did not wait for Specter and Mystic to land. Shutting off the ship's engines, he pulled a bullpup assault rifle off a rack at the exit to the cockpit and pressed the button to open the gunship's side doors. As the sound of the wind and rain washed into the passenger area, Caroso listened to the mechanical whine of Specter and Mystic's fighter as it circled overhead. Part of him wondered why they bothered to waste time flying in circles when they would be unable to do anything to defend him thanks to the stifling tree cover.

Shaking his head, he armed his weapon and jumped out of the gunship into the torrential downpour that drenched his black combat clothes in under ten seconds and reminded him of why he hated water in general. His keen eyes shifted from side to side in the darkness, watching for any threats lurking in the underbrush. For a second, he glanced at his wrist unit that synced with the gunship's central interface and pointed out Volkchelovek's location on a digitized overhead map of the area. The distress beacon measured five hundred feet from where he stood. Stopping for a moment and listening to his surroundings, he broke into a tentative sprint. A slight uphill curve marked the path ahead, and as he crested the top of the hill, he spotted the target. A short female coywolf with copper-colored fur sat among the roots of a towering forest tree with her knees pulled up to her chest in a pitiable posture that hinted at the excruciating pain she felt.

As Caroso approached her, he noticed countless claw marks and deep cuts on every conceivable part of her body – even her face, where she had fastened a makeshift eye patch made out of part of her cut-off tank top. She looked to be minutes away from death. Her only sign of life amounted to faint, shallow breathing that Caroso barely managed to notice.

As he dropped to his knees next to her, Irena turned her head, revealing her one bloodshot, blue eye that seemed to scream out in terror while the rest of her body was too weak to do so. Placing his hand on her shoulder, Caroso stroked it and whispered, "Don't panic – I'm going to get you out of here."

In response, Irena shook her head and bared her teeth in a fearful grimace. "No, you can't. You'll never escape. Y…You shouldn't have come for me. The gravity well…that…_thing. She'll _come for you…eventually."

Although his heart palpitated upon hearing Irena's warning, he brushed it aside and picked her off the ground. Her small figure offered him little resistance, although the feeling of blood crossed each one of his fingertips as he walked back to the parked gunship with the dying officer in his arms. After placing her on one of the bench seats in the passenger area, he opened his comms channel and contacted Specter.

"Boss, I've got the Brigadier General. She says there's no way out of this place. You've got to prove her wrong. Hurry up and deal with that gravity well. If I were you, I'd start by looking around that obelisk we saw earlier. It's the only building like it around here."

Specter hesitated, then responded, "I was thinking the same thing. Don't worry, Caroso – this isn't even close to the hardest job that I've ever pulled off. You take care of the Brigadier General and make sure she stays alive. We'll take care of the rest."

Caroso closed the call. _"Easier said than done. She might not last five more minutes."_

With the Brigadier General in relative safety aboard the transport ship, Specter broke out of his circular flight pattern and marked the location of the distant obelisk that loomed above the treetops that stretched for miles without the slightest sign of a break or substantial clearing. The tower – ten miles away at the moment – seemed relatively small, but Specter knew that its true size would become apparent as he drew closer.

While he increased the output of the two-seat fighter's engines, Mystic sat in silence, pondering the meaning of the world that she and her mate had become temporary prisoners in. She recalled hearing about planets such as this one while on Cerinia, but knew precious little about them except that the galaxy's precursor races supposedly originated on them. The looming tower ahead of them gave her an uncomfortable feeling, and as they pulled to within five miles of the building, she felt tinges of alien thought patterns that caused her fur to stand on end. The patterns themselves seemed unnatural, as if the capacity for emotion had been transferred to a machine that somehow managed to comprehend them.

The obelisk continued to draw nearer, growing larger and larger as Specter's fighter closed in on it. With less than a quarter mile to the tower, Specter broke to the right and circled the tower in hopes of finding a suitable landing spot somewhere nearby. Near the base of the tower which stood over five hundred feet in height and ended in a needle-like point, a triangular stone expanse created a partition with the forest around it. A sea of stone plates dotted the area, resembling a vast computer array. Despite her attempts to deny what she felt, Mystic discerned a palpable consciousness from the array below.

A moment later, Specter shattered her trance. "Get ready for anything. My scanners are telling me that this is some kind of storage database. Something this large is bound to be protected. I see a landing spot down there, but if anything happens, we need to get back into the fighter immediately. Got that?"

"Yes, Specter," Mystic replied with a faint gasp.

Without any further words, the old fox lowered the fighter to the wet stone surface of the array and opened both canopies. Much to his chagrin, the driving rain soaked him immediately. Doing his best to shake the annoying feeling of drenched fur, he vaulted over the edge of the cockpit and dropped to the ground with the agility of someone half his age. His counterpart followed suit; and after taking a quick glance around the area, he noticed that Mystic had drawn her replicated Cerinian combat staff, identical to the one formerly belonging to Krystal's father except that hers was painted dark blue as opposed to black. The duo's fighter rested between two rows of stone panels set up in the shape of massive computer terminals, complete with glass-like screens that would have been impossible to see without the white edges that made their outlines visible. Similarly clear keyboards awaited use below the monitors, which seemed to float in midair.

Rain dripped across every surface. Yet, for some reason, Mystic had the feeling that every one of the computer units would respond if accessed. She felt uncomfortable with trying such a thing for fear that she would activate an ancient security system or something of the like. Tentatively, she waved her hand over the clear keyboard in front of her. She expected nothing to happen, but a wave of blue lit up the entire pad, creating a grid pattern with over seventy keys laid out in the Cerinian language. Near the top right, a small, square protrusion flashed orange. No other cues accompanied it.

Mystic looked to Specter for some form of advice, but she knew that he would not be able to offer any knowledgeable suggestions. With a tense expression, he whispered, "Put your finger over that thing. If it triggers an alarm, we'll get back into the fighter and take off."

The magenta-furred vixen complied and moved her right index finger to the blinking orange box. As soon as the interface detected her digits, a small needle shot out of the console and stabbed her finger before withdrawing back into the stone edifice. She let out a loud yelp of pain as a drop of blood seeped out of the newly-inflicted puncture wound, and she felt tempted to ram her combat staff into the interface out of blind rage. After two seconds, however, the clear monitor above the keyboard glowed blue and then faded into a black background overlaid with blue hieroglyphics that filled the entire screen.

Just as surprised as Mystic, Specter moved closer to his mate and asked, "Is that your language?"

Mystic nodded. "This is unbelievable."

"What are you seeing, Lara?"

The vixen glanced at Specter out of the corner of her eye and answered, "It's an enormous data bank. I'm seeing directory folders for entire worlds, species, even matter itself. I don't know what do with it."

"I know what to do with it," Specter replied. "Find the gravity well and turn it off. Everything else is secondary. Somehow, I get the feeling that this interface is full of things that we shouldn't be looking into."

"I agree," said Mystic. "But someone had to use this thing at some point in the past. I know it's dangerous, but I want to know what's in here."

Specter gave her a dangerous glance but said nothing, allowing his mate to concentrate on her search for information on the gravity well. She tended to talk to herself when completing tasks that required a fair amount of her mental faculties; and despite the repetitive sound of the falling rain, Specter overheard her whispers. _"Database controls – Defense Systems – Central Gravity Well. There it is." _With a quick series of keystrokes, she silently selected the option to disable the gravity alteration device and confirmed her choice. She expected to need to enter an administrative password that she did not have, but to her surprise, the screen closed with a digitized chirp that seemed to have a positive connotation. A moment later, a low, rumbling sound pierced the air around them and then subsided after a quarter of a minute.

Letting a deep breath out of his lungs, Specter said, "That might have been it. We should see if we can leave now."

Mystic hesitated, then faintly shook her head. "Specter, I know we need to go, but this might be our only chance to read through what's inside this thing."

"Lara, I've seen things like this before. It's best just to leave them alone. Trust me on this."

"I know, I know…but we're only going to get to do this one time. Just give me sixty seconds – please."

Specter sighed. "Fine. I'm counting."

Knowing that her mate would not hesitate to pull her away from the keyboard after her minute had expired, Mystic attacked the holographic keys, struggling to remember the finger patterns for typed Cerinian hieroglyphics after exclusively using standard keyboards for years. One the screen in front of her, she returned to the main screen and selected the file directory that read 'Species Information'. Her eyes raced up and down the screen in hopes of finding the alien race she hoped would be present in the system, but to her disappointment, no foreign races appeared on the list that contained every kind of anthropomorph that she had seen and even several that she had not. Each of the species titles was printed in blue; but oddly enough, the title of her own race blazed orange. Holding her breath, she clicked the link to the Cerinian people.

The link opened up, revealing an anatomical layout of a Cerinian vulpine. In the top right corner of the screen, Mystic noticed an oddity – a message that read 'this page last modified 45 days ago.' Her eyes narrowed, then widened in shock when she noticed an the word 'Gematria' in the middle of a long list detailing what she believed to be every major facet of her own species' composition. Without hesitation, she clicked on the lettering. On cue, the display changed to an exploded image of the core genetic makeup and highlighted one minute portion that glowed orange against the otherwise blue backdrop.

Almost without thinking, she clicked on the highlighted portion, prompting yet another screen to load. Her heartbeat began to increase as the details of the unusual strand danced across the screen to the left of another anatomical layout that chilled her blood. The digital image showed a pair of silver-furred, bipedal creatures – one male and one female. Their forms looked lupine, but their claws appeared unusually similar to reptilian talons. In addition, feathers covered their torsos and shoulders.

Specter began counting down from ten with her fingers, but when he noticed the image on the screen, he stopped cold and stared at the display. At the same time, Mystic gasped, "Wait a minute! The civilian we rescued on Zharon was one of these things!"

"What are they?"

Mystic looked around for a name and title, then noticed the Cerinian term, 'Arcantat' near the top left of the screen. The term did not translate neatly into Lylatian, but she knew that the name was derived from the name of the Cerinian deity Arkantar.

Almost breathlessly, she replied, "Specter, this is one of the precursor races."

The older fox crossed his arms and looked into the distance, then asked, "Can you find out what happened to them?"

"Let me look at this," Mystic replied, glancing at the long list of labels on the left side of the screen. Once again, an odd term lit up in orange. This time, the duo of words read 'Genetic Composition.' Mystic clicked on the unusual tab, bringing up another exploded image of a DNA strand. Something seemed wrong, though – the same variation present in the Cerinian DNA also appeared in precursor race's helix. However, this one stood out against the blue backdrop with an eerie red glow that caused her to feel uneasy. She looked at Specter for some kind of validation, then clicked on the red genetic component. A split second later, the screen turned to black. Then, a strand of white hieroglyphics appeared.

Mystic took a quick step back and placed a hand over her trembling heart. After three seconds of silence from her, Specter demanded, "What does it say? Is something wrong?"

Locking eyes with her mate, the vixen replied, "This page mentions a plague that targeted that element of the Progenitors' DNA, which looks like it's also part of my own. That must be how I got into the system to begin with, actually. The date for the plague is listed as seven thousand years ago, but it doesn't say how or why it happened. This page doesn't open up into any others, either. It just ends here. Wait – whoever worked on Gematria must have had recent access to this database somehow. That virus targeted DNA that didn't have the one element that High Order Cerinians naturally have, but this plague attacks DNA with that element in it."

"I wonder if Gematria's creator reverse-engineered the plague that killed off whoever lived here. It's just a suggestion, but it sounds possible," Specter pointed out.

"I don't feel comfortable knowing that," Mystic replied.

"I told you that you should have just left it alone. We need to leave now, though. We've wasted enough time already as it is." Specter moved towards the parked fighter, wedged between two banks of the stone interface panels, then narrowed his eyes. "I don't think I need to warn you, but don't tell anyone about this place. I get the feeling there's a reason your planet's leadership punished people for knowing about its existence. I can't tell you why, but I can tell there's solid reasoning behind it. Oh, and one more thing – if you say one of the people you rescued on Zharon is part of the precursor race we saw here, you need to question him the instant you get back."

Mystic, looking a bit flustered, nodded her head and followed Specter back to the fighter before climbing in and closing the twin canopies.

"_Creepy place. Who puts a planet out here anyway? How are all the plants not dead if the closest sun is more than half a billion miles away? And why the bloody hell is it raining?"_

She suspected that the answers to her internal questions lay inside the massive interface built around the towering obelisk, but she also knew that those questions would never be answered. She had no plans to come back to this mysterious planet for that matter, either. Nevertheless, although she felt relieved to leave the planet's surface, she felt frustrated knowing that she would never be able to fully unearth the secrets kept within the oversized central database.

As Specter's fighter climbed into the rainy skies, she looked back at the obelisk behind her, growing smaller in the distance with every passing second. With a sigh, she shook her head, then set her mind to the next task in her itinerary – retrieving Fox for his meeting with Specter.

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):_

_Yes, Panther is Caroso, if it wasn't obvious already. I don't have any Star Wolf appearances (as a team) planned for this story, but I just wanted to include at least part of their lineup. Also, during the massive writer's block I experienced while writing Chapter 2, I put together almost an entire chapter for another part of the story, which just happens to be the next one. So, you can expect that one sooner rather than later. To me at least, it doesn't feel like it's been a month since my last update.  
_

_Speaking of that last month, Nintendo finally revealed the upcoming SF game, Zero. I'm sure many of you are probably thrilled with it, but I'm honestly just ticked off - partially because they axed Krystal, but mostly because they decided to 'reimagine' (i.e. rehash, reboot) the series in such a way that it ends up in almost the exact same place as 64 - for the second time, too! The Landmaster's gas pedal is still duct taped to the floor, the Arwings are still stuck on those prehistoric rails, and Andross is still the Big Bad! If I had to make a guess, I'd say players could expect to face his giant head in his Venomian lair yet again. I expected the devs to go back to the classic lineup and feel, but I had hoped that they'd do something creative with the design that would bring back the innovation that the series used to be associated with. Playing a modern facsimile of a 1997 game with a tablet controller seems more like a gimmick than a real step forward to me. Granted, it does have a few advancements over the classic games; but still, purchasing a Wii U is definitely not on my short list of things to do in the near future. I like the _Star Fox_ series, but I think that's about it for me as far as that goes.  
_

_Okay - rant over. I know I can't be the only one, though._


	8. Broken Legacy

**⑧ Broken Legacy ⑧  
**

Krystal stared at her friend with fear in her eyes. Ever since meeting the slightly younger vixen, she knew that Lilac suspected her of an unwillingness to admit the truth about something that mattered to both of them. Now, she knew that she would have to confess to the reality of Cerinia's demise and Hyacinth's death. The memory of her driving her staff through Lilac's mother's chest haunted her as she stared into the similar-looking face of her friend.

"_I can't tell her what really happened. She'll never want anything to do with me again, and she might even hurt me if I admit to what I did. How can I say this in a way that will keep our friendship intact while still getting this blasted regret off my chest?"_

While Krystal gawked at her, transfixed in terror, Lilac repeated her question with a gentle voice paired with a sad expression. "Krystal, please – just tell me what happened to Cerinia. Don't be afraid of hurting me – I need to know about this."

A flash of guilt lit up Krystal's face, but she concealed it almost immediately. The feeling of having to keep a secret as monstrous as hers hidden away from the rest of the universe did nothing positive for her, but she feared what would happen if her secret leaked out. Holding a hand over her heart in a vain attempt at calming herself, she attempted to reply and found herself unable to speak. With Lilac looking on in dreadful anticipation, she snapped and blurted out, "Cerinia blew up. It doesn't exist anymore. Everyone who was on the planet is dead now."

Lilac became faint and struggled to prevent herself from blacking out. A rush of emotion struck her senses all at once, causing a torrent of tears to burst forth from her orange eyes. The realization that her mother, her closest friends, and even the beauty of Cerinia itself had died dealt a punishing blow that felt physical to her. For over a minute, she wept on the bed before sliding off the side and walking up to her friend – who she now knew as one of the last surviving Cerinians.

She threw her arms around Krystal's shoulders and sobbed into her chest fur, mumbling incoherently with her tail between her legs and her ears pinned back. After two minutes, when she finally felt somewhat in control of her emotions, she released her death grip on Krystal and gazed into her tear-filled eyes. Choking on her own tears, Lilac asked, "How did it happen?"

Krystal hated to lie. She knew that she had to come out with the truth. Yet, at that moment, an idea dawned on her and provided her with a solution that would not only reveal the truth to Lilac, but would also exonerate her of the blame she knew she deserved.

Sighing, she looked at the ground and admitted, "My father did it. He took control of the planet, killed the High Council, and came up with a plan to cause mass extinction throughout the twin systems; but some offworld inferiors found out about his plan and attacked Cerinia in an attempt to stop him. They made it to the Temple and cornered him, but he escaped in the battleship that you saw on the news. When he left the planet's surface, he blew up an underground bomb because he couldn't stand to see the planet be taken over by inferiors. He was a monster, and I'm not sorry that he's dead now."

"Where we you during all of this? How did you escape?" Lilac begged.

Krystal gritted her teeth and prepared to fabricate a new reality for her story. "My father held me prisoner inside the Temple and tried to brainwash me into following him, but I held him off. When the offworlders breached the Temple, he abandoned me and left me for dead; but Fox rescued me and helped me escape from the planet."

Lilac sensed a trace of uncertainty in Krystal's words. The tone in which each syllable rolled off her tongue struck her as forced and unnatural. Yet at the same time, a quick scan of Krystal's immediate thoughts confirmed that her story held water – mostly. Despite her inferior telepathy compared to Krystal, Lilac understood that her friend still chose to hold something back from her. She wanted to know what she refused to admit, but she realized that either attempting to sift through her mind or directly confronting her about it would end badly.

Using her sorrow as a mask for her disappointment, Lilac asked, "Is that the gist of it?"

"Yes," Krystal nodded with her eyes closed and her head lowered. "I live with the misery of Cerinia's destruction every day. I just wish there was something that I could have done about it. At least there's still one other Cerinian out there."

Krystal moved to hug Lilac, and the younger vixen responded likewise. "At least that one other Cerinian is you."

A faint tear slipped out of Krystal's eye as she admitted, "I'm sorry that I didn't get to spend more time with you and your mother when I was younger. You were far better influences on me than my parents ever were."

Patting her friend on the back, Lilac whispered, "Don't say that, Krystal. I know your father and mother cared about you just as much as mine did. Even if..."

Realizing that her argument had no basis in reality according to Krystal's description of her monstrous father, she closed her mouth and sighed. All the while, the two vixens continued to hold each other, their friendship and care for each other acting as their only emotional anchor in their unsettling circumstances. After a minute, Krystal spoke. "Lilac, I'm afraid. Those other Cerinians aren't going to stop there. I'm terrified that this might only be the beginning of what they'll do."

Lilac stepped back and stared at Krystal. "Why did they attack in the first place? I thought your father was responsible for destroying Cerinia."

"There's more to it than that, but please – I don't want to talk about it right now. You'll find out about it eventually."

Lilac returned a pleading expression, but she realized that her friend was done talking. Through her eyes, Krystal looked physically worse for the wear after her brief explanation of Cerinia's demise, and Lilac had no desire to pressure her when it would only serve to injure her more. While Krystal walked back towards the bed in the center of the room, Lilac looked over her shoulder and said, "You're very brave, Krystal. There's no way I could go on living my life if I had been there to see my homeworld die."

Krystal paused, then climbed onto the bed and rested her head on the soft pillows near the headboard. "Thank you."

* * *

_\- _§_ -_

* * *

The hours seemed to turn to days as Fox sat on his small, white-covered bed inside the Specter PMC's starborne base. With his communicator taken from him and likely destroyed, he knew no one would come to free him from the prison that he had been confined in for the last day. With his knees pulled up to the tip of his muzzle, he hopelessly watched as the news broadcast on the wall-mounted television screen continued its ceaseless report on the massacre that had occurred in Corneria City. By this point, the identity of the attackers had been revealed; and Fox knew that their Cerinian background would put Krystal in extreme danger.

At the same time, he knew that escaping Specter's base was an impossibility. All of the ships in the hangar had biometric security measures designed to prevent unauthorized access, and every person he spoke to about leaving gave him the same response – "You won't be going anywhere until Specter talks with you in person." Fox bared his teeth and resisted the urge to audibly snarl at the mercenary leader, whom he had yet to lay eyes on. Nonetheless, he already hated him for holding him against his will while his friends and the Cornerian authorities begged for his help. Having heard the report from several of the PMC's other members, he knew that Specter would return to the base soon, provided that he managed to survive his most recent mission.

The unending chatter from the television screen soon became too much for Fox, and in a fit of rage, he snatched up the nearby remote and powered off the TV before throwing it back to his bed's surface. His head drooped to his chest as he worried about Krystal.

"_If I wasn't stuck here, I could have had her off the planet's surface by this point."_

For the first time in many months, he felt the urge to cry. Imprisonment was not something that bothered him any more than the next person, but the feeling of complete helplessness overwhelmed him and exacerbated his misery. Then, he heard a knock at his door, followed by the Cerinian-accented voice belonging to Mystic. "Specter will see you now. Open the door and follow me."

Leaping off the bed, Fox sprinted to the door and threw it open. He locked eyes with the hooded, magenta-furred Cerinian vixen outside the door and snarled, "If this conversation doesn't end in my freedom, I'll have his head."

"You couldn't hurt him if you wanted to," Mystic curtly replied. "I suggest that you take those emotions of yours and shove them up your arse. You're the only one who'll be hurt by them in the end, so you'd do well to get rid of them before they get you killed."

Fox's eyes blazed in anger, but Mystic simply sighed and began walking down the white hallway outside Fox's door. The two foxes passed Slippy's room and then the quarters where Voltimure was likely conducting some sort of experiment before they reached the blank door at the end of the hall. Stepping in front of the door and swiping her finger in front of the door latch scanner, she beckoned Fox to follow her through the door as it slid open.

Upon entering the area behind the door, Fox noted that the colors of black and red dominated the rooms and hallways. Faint, haunting, red wall sconces provided the only light in the area, which sported a small smattering of furnishings that spurned luxury and espoused a form of intelligent minimalism.

"Are these Specter's quarters?" Fox asked.

"Yes. Apart from his office area, the only people who ever come in here are him and myself. The next door on the left is the door you want."

As Fox stared at it, the black composite door panel that Mystic had pointed out brought a feeling of fear to his mind. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it reminded him of the fear he felt when he learned that his father had been killed. The fear of loneliness and abandonment.

"I'll leave you two to talk things out. I'll be in the white hallway to take you back when you're finished," said Mystic.

Fox glared at her with his peripheral vision and growled, "No, you'll be waiting to escort me and my teammate back to the hangar so we can get out of this place."

"We shall see," Mystic replied, turning her back on Fox and walking out of the hallway. As the door closed behind her, Fox took a deep breath and swiped his finger in front of the sensor on the right side of the door in front of him. With a haunting lack of speed, it slid open to reveal a simple office area, replete with an unimpressive black desk, two red chairs, and a small weapons rack that stood on the left side of the room. Behind the desk, the enigmatic Specter sat in an old synthetic leather chair with a cigar held between the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

"Sit down," the old fox rasped, placing his cigar in its wooden holder on his desk.

Fox obliged, and after taking his seat in one of the red chairs, he gritted his teeth and stared into Specter's one eye that lacked a patch. "Why are you keeping me here? There are people who need me right now. My planet is blowing up while I'm stuck in this prison of yours."

Specter let out a deep breath and replied, "Imprisonment is a matter of perspective. I've given you everything you needed while you were here. I allowed you to go anywhere in the base without a chaperone. This place isn't short on features, so for you to say it's a prison is a stretch."

"It's a prison because you didn't let me do the one thing I needed to do."

"What? Leave? Trust me, you didn't need to go anywhere. You don't need to go anywhere now."

Fox bared his teeth and slammed both hands down on Specter's desk. "I have a friend who might be dead right now, and if she is, it's all because you wouldn't let me leave this base."

For a second, Specter's face suggested that he felt somewhat guilty about holding Fox for as long as he had. Fox took note of the elder vulpine's expression, as it seemed like the first time that he had showed the slightest semblance of an emotion. After a moment of silence, Specter whispered, "You can't save them all. You never can. I used to want to believe that it was lie, but just like you, I was stuck in denial until it was too late for me to go back. I lost everything that mattered to me. The only two things I've still got to hold onto are Mystic and this PMC."

"Hmph. That's not much to hold onto. I don't think I've met anyone in this place who has a soul," Fox grumbled, leaning back in his chair.

"That's because we have all suffered far more greatly than most people ever will. In one way or another, we're all refugees here, Fox. We can't help being a bit 'soulless' at times. Your emotions can't hurt you if you never allow them to come to the surface."

Fox shook his head. "You can say that all you want, but it's still not true. My father was killed when I was a teenager, and after ten years, I still don't feel any better."

When Specter locked eyes with him, Fox thought he saw a tear creeping out of his good eye. "That's why I kept you here. I had jobs to take care of, but talking to you was more important than those."

"Then why did you put it off for this long after you trapped me here?"

"Because I didn't want to deal with the pain of what I have to tell you, Fox," Specter replied, wiping his eye and confirming the fact that he was indeed crying. "Look at me. Look at what I've become."

Fox forced himself to look at the old fox's weathered, scarred face. His black eye patch, the small piece of his left ear that had been ripped out by a stray bullet, the deep, knife-inflicted scar that barely missed his good eye, and the irreparable lines in his face caused by age, stress, and anguish pointed to a tormented, war-torn soul whose only happiness came from his prowess in having the only thing his PMC required – the ability to kill and to accomplish an objective regardless of the cost.

"I did everything I could to keep you from becoming like me, but I failed," Specter sighed. "I tried to teach you the importance of loyalty, knowing the difference between right and wrong, and that no amount of money can ever take the place of friends and family. But I taught you as a hypocrite. I never believed any of those things, and they never made sense to me until it was too late. When I saw that you wanted to follow in my footsteps, I moved heaven and earth to enroll you in the Cornerian Flight Academy, knowing that you would end up flying for the military – for a cause, whether right or wrong. But something happened, and I'm afraid that it's too late for you, Fox. That is why I've been keeping you here all this time."

Fox's eyes widened. At the same time, a duo of emotions waged a war inside of his mind, with feelings of rage and unspeakable relief fighting each other to determine which emotion would control his response.

"Dad?" he whispered.

Specter lowered his head and faintly waved his hand as if to say 'no.' "I'm not your father, Fox. Not anymore."

The old fox silently pleaded for Fox to show him at least a trace of sympathy, but Fox would have none of it. Clenching his fists, he demanded, "Why did you lie to me? Do you know how much I've suffered over the years because I believed you were dead? I don't get it! If you were alive, why didn't you at least tell me?"

"Do you think that it didn't hurt me too?" asked Specter, looking up from his desk and struggling to meet Fox's eyes. "I did it for your sake."

"How could that possibly have been good for me? I would have killed myself ten years ago if Peppy hadn't found me before I pulled the trigger."

Specter sighed. "I knew that was a risk I would have to take. I am truly sorry for what you've had to live through."

"That's easy for you to say now," Fox retorted, gritting his teeth in frustration. "Let me guess – my mom is still alive somewhere, isn't she?"

In response, Specter turned his chair to the side and stared at the wall on the left side of the office. "I'm sorry, Fox – she died of cancer five years ago."

Exasperation showed itself in Fox's voice as he yelled, "What were you two thinking? Did you just expect me to grow up and become a normal, 'perfect' person with two dead parents?"

"It's not as simple as it sounds, Fox," Specter muttered.

"Well, tell me everything then. I think I deserve to know it at this point."

Specter forced himself to look at his son and replied, "I suppose you do. But before I tell you anything, I have to give you a warning."

"I don't think I care," Fox growled.

"I understand, but I'll warn you anyway. What I am about to tell you could hurt you even more than what you already know. It won't happen immediately, but it'll wear on you over time. It's just the way things work. Most people aren't fully aware of things like this, and I would say it's for their benefit. No one is entitled to their ignorance, but knowing too much is an even greater curse than not knowing anything. After all, you can't be prosecuted for knowing nothing."

"I don't see where you're going with this," said Fox.

"You're about to," Specter replied. "Let me start at the beginning, because this goes back to when I was a boy. I never told you any of this, partially because I was too ashamed of myself to show such weakness to my son, and partially because it would expose me as the monster that I am."

"Dad, I'm sure you've done some bad things. We all have. I've done some things that I regret, but in the end, we just have to live with them and accept them for what they are. Whatever you tell me, it's not going to change the way I look at you."

"You say that now, but you won't be saying that when I'm finished," Specter warned.

"Whatever you tell me, I can handle it," Fox stated, although his uneasy posture suggested that his attitude did not match his words.

Clearing his throat, Specter stood up from his chair, walked around the desk, and took a seat next to Fox in the red chair beside him. Despite his proximity to his son, he refused to make eye contact with him, almost as if an invisible, almighty force was preventing him from doing so. "When I was a boy, I hated my father. He was – in simple terms – a fundamentalist. Looking back, I realize that he actually did have my good in mind; but back then, I wanted nothing to do with him. He was a colonel with the Cornerian Defense Force, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone more loyal to his country than he was.

I never wanted to follow in his footsteps, but I was forced into the Cornerian Flight Academy nonetheless. After my first year, I realized that graduating and joining the Space Fighter Corps would be my best chance at getting away from my dad. So I did just that. Then, I found that there was a market for small mercenary teams, and that they'd get paid three to four times as much as military grunts did if they did a good enough job. I worked for a few private military contractors until I built up enough of a reputation to convince a creditor to give me a loan on the _Great Fox_ and the original Arwings. After that, I brought in Peppy and Pigma, who were friends of mine from my Academy days; and we started Star Fox.

Around that same time, I started dating your mother, and we got married about a year after that. She worked as a technological consultant in one of Corneria's state-run science divisions, and she worked under guess who? Dr. Andross Bowman. If you couldn't figure it out by now, that's where our problems started."

"I knew you were involved with Andross somehow, but it makes more sense now," Fox murmured.

"Yes, but it goes deeper," Specter replied. "Some way or another, Vixy introduced me to Andross, and he became sort of a family friend. Believe it or not, he wasn't always a crazed madman. His switches started getting flipped not too long after that, though. I remember it like it was yesterday. I and Vixy were eating dinner, and Andross knocked on our door with the most terrified expression on his face that I'd ever seen. He told us that he had somehow dug up information suggesting that the Cornerian higher-ups were about to kill him and everyone working on his most recent project – and that included Vixy. He didn't know how it was possible for them to do that, but he was convinced that they were coming for him."

"Wait a minute – Corneria was going to execute Andross? But he hadn't done anything yet," Fox objected.

For the first time since taking a seat next to Fox, Specter looked at him and replied, "Exactly. But I think they were afraid of what he was working on. I don't know all the details, but I believe he was trying to create a more comprehensive AI system than the one that was being used at the time. He knew it was a risky move, but he kept working on it anyway. If history is to be believed, someone like him did the exact same thing 150 years ago – and it almost wiped out Cornerian civilization. The feds knew that, and I don't think they were too happy about having him continue with his research. He was very close to finalizing his work, you see."

Specter continued, "At that point, I knew I had to do something. I couldn't lose my Vixy because someone in the government didn't like Andross's work. At the same time, I wanted to help Andross get out before they got to him. So, we came up with a plan to clear all of us. We rigged one our cars with a bomb and faked Vixy's death, claiming that Andross had been making romantic advances on her and was trying to get me out of the picture. It did the trick. Vixy disappeared without a trace, and Andross was given the sentence we anticipated – exile to Venom. We knew it would be tough for him to survive there, but he already had plans in mind for that place by the time he was sentenced."

Incredulous, Fox stared at Specter and asked, "Where did my mom go after you faked her death?"

"She spent a while with her family on Skallis. That's where she's from, if you didn't know."

"Her sister was in on this, wasn't she?"

Specter nodded. "Yes. I wasn't happy about it, but Vixy was confident that she could trust her to keep the truth buried. She stayed with her family for a few years until Andross contacted us and gave us an update on how he was doing. The Cornerian government thought he'd drop dead on Venom, but instead of dying, he became the leader of the first real civilization on the planet. That's when he asked me and Vixy if we would be interested in helping him."

"But you didn't accept the offer," Fox stated, certain in his supposition.

"This is the part that I warned you about," Specter replied. "I took him up on it. After years of mercenary work, I had begun to see that the Cornerian Federation was not the benevolent collaborative effort they claimed it was. Andross spoke about working to create change in the system, and I believed him. Vixy resumed her work as his assistant, although there wasn't much that I could really do to help him. I had you and my team to take care of. I knew Peppy wouldn't understand, but Pigma, on the other hand…"

Fox's expression fell. "Was…Pigma's betrayal – was that staged? Did you plan that?"

For several seconds, Specter looked at the red carpet on the ground. Then, he answered, "Yes. I'm sorry. There came a time when I and Vixy realized how insane Andross had become. Maybe it was the air on Venom – I don't know. The bottom line is that his goals became more and more violent. He started putting together an army, and he wanted Star Fox to help him. That was when I realized that we needed to get out. At the same time, I got a tip from someone I knew. They told me that the Cornerian Department of Internal Security was starting to figure out that Vixy's death was staged and that both of us were involved with Andross. I didn't have a choice. I had to leave Lylat, so I let Pigma in on my allegiance with Andross. When General Pepper sent us to Venom to investigate Andross's activities, I got my chance to make my break. Just like I planned, Pigma shot me down and forced Peppy to fall back to the _Great Fox_. It was the perfect cover for what really happened. Everyone on Corneria thought that Pigma had betrayed the team, and that I was dead."

"Pigma taunted me with your death during the Lylat Wars," said Fox. "So, you're telling me that he was lying the whole time?"

"Yes," Specter admitted. "Vixy and I fled from Andross the next day. We never came back. Well actually…"

"You helped me escape after I killed Andross," Fox finished. "I should have known. I thought I was just seeing things."

"After realizing how much I hurt you, I had to make it up to you somehow," Specter replied. "I don't expect you to ever forgive me, but I did what needed to be done. I didn't want you to grow up knowing the truth about me, and I didn't want you to be a target for the Cornerian intelligence spooks on account of my mistakes. I didn't want you to suffer like I did, so I lied to you, I lied to Peppy, and I lied to all of Corneria. I'm sorry, Fox – but I'm not the man you thought I was."

Taking a deep breath, Fox placed an uneasy hand on Specter's shoulder and whispered, "You're exactly who I thought you were. That's why I loved you, Dad."

"Stop calling me that, Fox. I'm not your father anymore. I'm just a callous old man out for blood. Your father died a long time ago."

"Don't give me that garbage," Fox growled. "You've changed less than you think you have."

"If that's true, then I failed you as a parent," Specter sighed. "Listen Fox, I want you to promise me something. When you get back to Corneria, I want you to terminate Star Fox for good. I thought my 'death' would have ended the team, but it only brought my worst fears to life. I never wanted you to follow in my footsteps and become a mercenary."

Although he tried to suppress it, Fox allowed a single sob to slip out. "I…I thought you'd be proud of me. I did it all for you."

"I know," Specter yelped, clutching his head with both hands. "The one thing I tried desperately to keep you away from was the one thing you followed me into. But there's still time to fix it, and you'll make me proud by doing it. Tell Peppy and your crew that you're disbanding the team, sell the _Great Fox_ if you've still got it, and move on. Please, Fox. Do it for me. If you want to make me proud, listen to me and finish what I started."

Wide-eyed, Fox stared into Specter's one good eye and replied, "I can't do that. I understand why you did what you did, but after ten years of being forced to come to grips with your death, I can finally say that you and mom are dead to me. I don't know if I can ever truly forgive either of you for abandoning me. You told me that you're not my father anymore, so I'm not going to listen to you – and I'm not going to disband my team. Now, get me the hell out of this place." Although he tried to project confidence in his voice, overtones of grief crept into his words.

Specter's eyes never left the floor as he slumped forward in his chair. "There's a transport in the hangar. Mystic will take you where you need to go."

Without another word, Fox stood up and left the room, not stopping once to acknowledge Specter. Swiping his finger in front of the door sensor on the office exit, he waited until the door opened and then stepped through. In spite of his best efforts, he felt forced to stop and take one last look into the room before he left his father behind. Although he heard nothing, he could see the grizzled fox holding his head in his hands and sobbing. As he stared at him, the feelings of rage against Andross and Pigma slowly disappeared from his mind, replaced by a newfound disgust for the man he had once idolized. He took one quick glance at the door down the hall where Mystic would be waiting for him, then told his father, "Take care of yourself…Specter."

* * *

_AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):  
_

_I bet some of you probably saw something like this coming, but for those of you that didn't...well, there's your surprise. Poor Fox - he's really taking a beating in this story.  
_

_I'm not sure what I plan to focus on next, but I'd like to avoid having the next chapter take an inordinate amount of time to write. We'll see how it pans out._


End file.
